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Good practice Imported

DNCP Contrataciones Abiertas — Paraguay's Open Contracting Data Standard for Public Procurement

Paraguay · Asunción · See the Paraguay profile · See the Asunción profile

Evidence: Observational / pre–post Top 19% 81/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Paraguay's procurement agency DNCP was one of the world's first adopters of the Open Contracting Data Standard, publishing full-cycle tender data that nearly doubled the contract value won by small and medium enterprises and cut amendments from 19% to 3%.

2.6% to 4.9%
MSME share of contract value (Q4 2021-Q4 2023)
30% to 44%
Tenders with at least one MSME bid (Q4 2021-Q4 2023)
19% to 3%
Contract amendment rate
~10x reduction
Unit price fall for PPE during COVID-19 (COVID-19 emergency)
DNCP Contrataciones Abiertas — Paraguay's Open Contracting Data Standard for Public Procurement

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
Dirección Nacional de Contrataciones Públicas (DNCP)
Period
2003–2024
Keywords
public procurement, open data, digital government, anti-corruption

Context

Paraguay's Direccion Nacional de Contrataciones Publicas (DNCP) began digitising state procurement in 2003 and became one of the earliest adopters worldwide of the Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS), alongside Canada and Ukraine.

Objectives

Publish structured, full-cycle procurement data -- covering planning, tender, award, contract and implementation stages of every public purchase -- to increase transparency, curb corruption and improve access for small and medium enterprises.

Activities

DNCP publishes data across the entire procurement lifecycle. During the COVID-19 emergency, this published data let journalists and civil-society monitors track pandemic purchases in real time.

Results

Independent tracking by the Open Contracting Partnership between Q4 2021 and Q4 2023 found the share of contract value awarded to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) nearly doubled, from 2.6% to 4.9%, while the share of tenders attracting at least one MSME bid rose from 30% to 44%. Earlier open-contracting reforms are credited with cutting the rate of contract amendments from 19% to 3%. During the COVID-19 emergency, unit prices for protective equipment fell roughly tenfold as tendering sped up.

Conclusions

The OECD's 2019 Multi-dimensional Review of Paraguay still flags governance and corruption weaknesses economy-wide, and several of the strongest figures come from DNCP's own published data rather than a fully external audit -- independent triangulation by third parties such as the Open Contracting Partnership is what supports confidence in the results above.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k)
Time to results
Long (> 3 years)
Staffing & skills
DNCP staff operating the national open-contracting data platform

Conditions for success

  • Legal institutionalisation of open-contracting publishing since 2003
  • Full-cycle publishing (planning, tender, award, contract, implementation)
  • Independent third-party monitoring (Open Contracting Partnership) for external credibility
  • Civil-society and journalist engagement with the published data

Common failure modes

  • Reliance on DNCP's own self-published data for several headline figures, rather than a fully external audit
  • Persistent economy-wide governance and corruption weaknesses noted by the OECD

Where it fits

Governance type
national government procurement agency
Scale
national procurement system
Income level
middle-income (Paraguay)

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

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