Could the World Bank’s STEP update be an opportunity to incentivize bolder procurement transformation?

World Bank procurement represents more than $250 billion across 1,600 projects in over 100 countries. How those funds are spent is hugely valuable for the Bank, client countries and citizens who should ultimately benefit. Better data on World Bank procurement spending has the power to evaluate and demonstrate how investments lead to the improved livelihoods, job creation, better infrastructure and human development outcomes outlined in the Bank’s own Scorecard.

The Bank understands the value of this procurement data. It launched the Systematic Tracking of Exchanges in Procurement (STEP) system in 2015 to capture and record data at various stages of the procurement cycle for investment projects. In late 2024, the Independent Evaluation Group’s Making Procurement Work Better recommended modernizing and upgrading STEP to take advantage of the latest innovation in the field.

The Bank has embraced this opportunity and is undertaking its most ambitious update to STEP yet. We believe this is an opportunity to create a virtuous circle of better STEP data that incentivizes investment in country procurement systems, feeds into better and better STEP analytics and insights over time, and supports the Bank’s Scorecard goals and each country’s domestic policy objectives.

Three ways to make sure STEP is as bold as the World Bank’s vision:

1. Direct integration with country systems

The 2025 Independent Evaluation Group’s report Making Procurement Work Better strongly encouraged the Bank to invest directly in country procurement systems so that procurement for investment projects contributes to strengthening domestic capacity over time. This is critical as countries are asked to expand domestic resource mobilization and lead more of their own development as development finance becomes more restricted. 

STEP could be designed to ingest data directly from country e-procurement systems where these are in place and the data is available. Governments are increasingly publishing their own open data directly from their e-procurement systems, many already in structured formats such as the Open Contracting Data Standard. Today, around 20 client countries actively publish OCDS data, and a handful do so in near real time, increasing the usefulness and value of the data for further use and analysis. Countries like Ukraine, Rwanda and Tanzania show how investing in country systems supports client country and Bank objectives, and the Bank played a role in making these transformations happen.

As client governments conduct more procurement through their own systems, data on Bank-financed contracts can flow directly into the Bank’s record-keeping. One example on how this integration can look is the Inter-American Development Bank’s MapaInversiones (Investment Map) tool, which tracks infrastructure projects in 14 countries across Latin American & the Caribbean using country procurement data as a source.

2. Strengthening the foundation with quality data

Analytics, AI tools, and performance tracking are only as good as the data they draw on. To make sense of procurement processes and track progress toward development goals, the Bank needs data that is accurate, complete, and organized into well-defined, structured fields. If used as the main data model, the OCDS can help ensure that the contracting data STEP collects and publishes meets global best practice and is fit for purpose for a range of users, from Bank task teams and procurement specialists to client governments and civil society.

Mapping STEP data to a data standard would make it machine-readable, interoperable and comparable across projects and countries. It would also let the Bank run automated quality checks against the schema, such as missing fields, invalid values, or inconsistent dates.

Adopting a standardized format changes how STEP relates to and integrates with national procurement systems, and powers up its ability to use more advanced analytics and AI tools. Aligning STEP with national datasets in a consolidated database that shares the same structure would reduce reporting burdens and duplication. It would also make integration simpler and give a more complete picture of contracting processes, including where Bank-financed and domestically financed procurement meet.

To make this possible, Bank-financed tenders and contracts need to be identifiable wherever they are recorded. Using common identifiers, such as the Bank’s project identifier, consistently across STEP and national systems would allow the Bank to link records of the same contracting process and trace Bank financing from tender through to contract implementation. This approach reduces duplicate data entry and the overall administrative burden for both the Bank and client governments.

If the data foundations are in place, well-established integration mechanisms such as APIs and bulk data downloads can reliably connect national systems with STEP. These mechanisms are predictable and auditable. They also allow governments to decide what data is shared, with whom, and under what access controls, addressing data sovereignty and security. 

3. Turning quality data into tools for decision-making

With a foundation of quality, standardized data, STEP could be used to provide market intelligence, sustainable procurement and governance risk indicators and other insights as desired. It would allow the Bank to go deeper than retrospective record-keeping and reporting to generate and use data as a strategic decision-making asset that helps improve operational efficiency, value for money and governance. Investing in these capabilities would strengthen the ability of domestic procurement to contribute to bigger picture long-term goals such as job creation. 

This level of data-driven insights can help the Bank achieve its Scorecard objectives and client countries reach their policy goals. By showing the added value of investing in procurement data and systems, the Bank can use STEP to incentivize governments to prioritize investing in country systems.

Examples of existing domestic analytics tools include the Dominican Republic’s integrity red flags, Ukraine’s business intelligence tools, and Paraguay’s use of data and AI to predict which tenders suit SMEs.

Technical e-GP and procurement data support could invest in country systems and develop client governments to become “STEP ready” over time. Client countries would be incentivized to access more valuable insights into their own procurement, while the Bank would be incentivized to reduce reporting burdens and demonstrate progress against Scorecard targets more clearly. 

The World Bank’s recent reforms in Tanzania are a case in point. Within two years, Tanzania developed its own end-to-end platform National e-Procurement System of Tanzania (NeST). All 62,000 procuring entities are now using the platform to award contracts, from rural schools and health clinics to major cities and national agencies. It has increased efficiency, expanded access for SMEs and a red flags detection system is under development.

Committing to ambitious long-term reforms over short-term fixes

As STEP is improved and expanded, the Bank has the opportunity to think strategically about the scope of data that World Bank projects collect. It can also explore how to collect the right data to assess performance against its own Scorecard and client country social value and development targets. 

We know this vision is ambitious, reality is messy, and the situation varies from country to country. Data will always be somewhat imperfect. Integrating World Bank procurement with country systems and strengthening them strategically is harder and takes more time than upgrading the STEP interface and capabilities from an IT perspective. Countries will become ready for integration on different timescales. 

That said, a bold long-term vision for the STEP system can turn a reporting and compliance tool that risks duplicating country data entry into an opportunity. Stronger country systems will ensure World Bank resources are invested ever more strategically, effectively and sustainably as countries progress over time.