evidoria

← Back to browse

Good practice Imported

SIGMA — Bulgaria's AI-Assisted Real-Time Public Procurement Transparency Platform

Bulgaria · Sofia · See the Bulgaria profile · See the Sofia profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 62% 53/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Bulgaria's Ministry of Innovation and Digital Transformation launched SIGMA, a free, AI-assisted platform giving citizens real-time search over 193,019 public contracts worth over EUR51bn across 4,440 institutions (2020–2026), built in under a month with no extra budget.

193,019
Contracts/lots covered (2020-2026)
>EUR51bn
Total procurement value covered (2020-2026)
4,440
Contracting institutions covered
SIGMA — Bulgaria's AI-Assisted Real-Time Public Procurement Transparency Platform

Details

Maturity
Pilot
Promoter
Bulgarian Ministry of Innovation and Digital Transformation
Period
Launched 16 June 2026 (covers contract data 2020–2026)
Keywords
public procurement, anti-corruption, transparency, open data

Context

In June 2026 Bulgaria's Ministry of Innovation and Digital Transformation launched SIGMA, a free public platform letting any citizen search public procurement spending without registration, presented to the Council of Ministers by Prime Minister Rumen Radev on 16 June 2026.

Results

The dataset covers 193,019 contracts and procurement lots worth more than EUR51 billion, awarded by 4,440 contracting institutions between 2020 and 2026, searchable with daily updates. According to the ministry, SIGMA was built in under a month by existing staff without additional budget, using AI to accelerate development; v2 and v3 roadmap versions plan to flag related-party patterns and extend oversight to the procurement process itself.

Conclusions

SIGMA launched only weeks before this record, so there is no independent evaluation yet of whether it reduces corruption, price inflation, or single-bidder tenders -- persistent problems flagged in prior OECD reviews of the region; regional press frames it as an early, largely untested digital anti-corruption tool.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k)
Time to results
Short (< 1 year)
Staffing & skills
Existing ministry IT staff (no additional budget/hires reported)

Conditions for success

  • AI-accelerated development enabling a sub-one-month build
  • Free, no-registration public access with daily data updates

Common failure modes

  • No independent evaluation yet of anti-corruption impact

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

Do you run this practice? Claim it — verified implementers get a public contact pathway and can propose corrections.

Data sources

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

Attachments

Similar practices you may find useful