Technologies like GenAI and agentic AI have the potential to help public sector organizations increase efficiency through automation and strengthen decision-making, helping stretch tight human resources to better serve the public.

AI is entering government in different ways, through direct procurement of licenses or tools, but often, personal use and pilot projects provide entry through the side doors.

Good AI procurement looks like good technology procurement. But there are differences as AI is rapidly growing and changing.  AI carries a unique combination of risks, including data management & bias, establishing adequate safeguards & liabilities, questions of ownership, and environmental impacts.

Good procurement addresses this. We help build organizational readiness, ensure value-aligned technology and set up outcome-driven procurement. As a fast-changing new technology, where vendors are pushing their services, OCP provides technology-neutral advice and support.

We support governments in two ways:

• We help governments leverage AI for better procurement. We build AI that makes procurement data more accessible, provide AI-powered analytics, and produce more and better data to track performance and spending – from comparing medicine prices to filtering business opportunities for SMEs.
• We advise governments to buy AI responsibly, building on our BuyingAI guide and by providing bespoke training and technical assistance. We can support the development of procurement strategies that help you acquire modular agile AI-enabled technology, drafting RFPs, market engagement, evaluation, contract scoping or vendor management. We can also link you to governments who have learned what works and what doesn’t.

Our approach to AI

We believe in responsible AI. That means AI that is based around clear guidelines and values that is human-centered, participatory, and transparent. We believe in humans staying in the loop for decisions and clear reasoning and audit trails for AI system decisions.

Are you interested in understanding how you can improve your technology procurement, particularly of AI contracts? We are working with partners globally to deliver different types of practical training sessions – whether it’s to get a first overview of what matters or how to improve the procurement process in detail.

AI is making it faster and cheaper to digitize procurement records, extract information from documents, and bridge gaps in data coverage.

But to make the most out of AI, governments need to invest in structured systems that produce high-quality data by design, and AI tools that help fill gaps, augment coverage, and make the data more useful.

OCP’s Open Contracting Data Standard provides a shared structure that makes data comparable and accountable, creating the foundation that makes everything else work.