Emergencies are exactly when procurement is most exposed: huge sums of money need to move fast to respond to a crisis, competition is thin or the market may be disrupted, and urgency lessens scrutiny.

But speed and integrity need not be a trade-off. The evidence from COVID-19 emergency procurement is very clear: countries using more open procurement methods bought better, and those that didn’t paid for it twice, both by overspending and by buying the wrong things.

Our five recommendations for good emergency procurement

Drawn from OCP’s work with more than 20 partners during the COVID-19 pandemic and the lessons of what happened when procurement was rushed behind closed doors, and grounded in the international standards set by the UNODC, the UN Convention against Corruption, and the UNCITRAL Model Law on Public Procurement.

Get emergency procurement right: Whether you’re preparing for the next crisis or responding to one now, we can help you buy fast, smart and open.

1. Publish information fast, and publish as open data

Transparency doesn’t have to be the price of speed. When markets are disrupted, information on who has stocks of vital PPE or other commodities is really important. Ukraine published emergency contracts within 24 hours; the UK took an average of over 100 days, and much of what it bought turned out to be unusable. The head of Ukraine’s award-winning Prozorro e-GP system explains how valuable real-time data is to coordinate emergency procurement.

We can help: Publish key information in real time, including as structured, machine-readable OCDS data, and put it to work monitoring risks, bottlenecks and red flags to catch problems while there’s still time to act.

2. Clear emergency procurement policies that support as much competition as possible

Emergencies justify moving faster, not abandoning the rules. Think about a ladder of competitive methods, making direct, single-source awards the last resort. All direct awards should carry a clear justification: why immediate action was needed, why competition wasn’t possible even in a lighter-touch form, how the supplier was chosen, and how the price was checked. Above all, no “VIP lanes.” The UK’s informal political referral channel during COVID-19 was later ruled unlawful, and contracts that came through it often failed. Let the professionals run procurement, not the politicians. As the academic literature shows, bad emergency procurement habits tend to outlast the emergency itself and quietly become the new normal long after the crisis passes.

We can help: Advise on the emergency decrees, legislation and guidelines that keep the response fast and accountable, so the rules can respond to a crisis without opening the door to abuse and cronyism.

3. Know exactly who you’re buying from

The fastest route to fraud in a crisis is a shell company with a hidden owner and a political connection. Require bidders and awarded suppliers to disclose their beneficial owners, and screen every award against debarment, sanctions and politically exposed persons lists before money moves. Nearly £4 billion of the UK’s PPE spend went to firms with links to the governing party.

We can help: Build the data and risk indicators to support better due diligence, and the digital tools to do so at speed and scale.

4. Prepare before the crisis hits

Many “emergency” needs are foreseeable. Put framework agreements, vetted supplier databases, standard documents and a clear risk assessment in place while things are calm to avoid improvising under pressure. Preparedness also prevents the panic-buying that left the UK destroying 500 lorry-loads of surplus PPE a month: buy what you need, not everything you can. Stop and review how the emergency response is going, plan and adjust. Lithuania’s formal mid-response procurement review in 2020 is a good model: it allowed them to see what wasn’t working and course-correct while the emergency was still ongoing.

We can help: Shape the plans and policies before the crisis and bring buyers, agencies, suppliers and oversight bodies onto the same page, improving cross-agency and cross-sector coordination and supplier engagement so the system pulls together under pressure.

5. Open the door for innovation and collaboration

In an emergency, the best way to build a comprehensive picture of the challenge is to work with civil society and business, especially as everyone is strongly motivated to be (even) more constructive than usual.

Emergencies can also spur innovation. Open, well-run supplier engagement, including challenge-style initiatives, can mobilize new suppliers fast when normal supply chains fail.

Civil society and journalists did amazing work during COVID-19, tracking prices and deliveries of key items to expose overcharging, fraud and misspending that official processes missed. They also worked to build trust and collaboration in their communities. A great example of collaboration between civil society and the government comes from Moldova.

We can help: Support practical monitoring methodologies and advocacy strategies for civil society and the media so that oversight happens during spending. We can connect you to what’s actually working (and what isn’t) in other cities and countries through peer-to-peer learning.

• UNODC, Non-binding Guidelines on corruption during times of emergency and crisis response and recovery, 2024
• Emergency procurement for COVID-19: buying fast, open and smart, 2020
• Was the UK’s Covid PPE procurement even worse than we thought?”, 2024
• The future of public spending: responses to COVID-19. Economist Intelligence Unit, 2020
• Public procurement during emergencies” (How to Crack a Nut), 2025
• Public Procurement’s long COVID: Emergency responses and shifting corruption risks in Europe, 2026
• Finding collaborative solutions in a crisis: How COVID-19 brought procurement actors in Eastern Europe and Central Asia together, 2020
• Building a campaign for COVID monitoring in Moldova in 60 days, 2020
• Integrity in IMF emergency lending: what worked?, 2021
• How open contracting approaches help Ukraine to tackle COVID-19, 2020

Paraguay:
The national public procurement agency published a searchable dataset of its COVID-19 response procurement and created a framework agreement to procure emergency items. Building on our advice, they also created a registry of suppliers that can sell emergency items in Paraguay.
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Chile:
The medical procurement agency CENABAST was granted greater market power under a new law, which should reduce medicine prices. Civil society is also using data-driven red flags risk indicators to monitor COVID-19 related contracts. We have started a local research project in collaboration with CENABAST to further improve its procurement processes.

Colombia:
The procurement agency Colombia Compra Eficiente created a dashboard showing emergency procurement, and civil society organizations across the country have partnered to monitor these purchases.

Ecuador:
The national procurement agency SERCOP created a public search tool with downloadable OCDS data to monitor COVID-19 emergency procurement and detect signs of corruption and provided a channel for complaints. Civil society identified overpriced contracts for key medical supplies including N95 masks and body bags, and generated public pressure to suspend processes and hold responsible actors to account.
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Moldova:
Positive Initiative, the largest patients’ rights and advocacy group in the country, built a coalition of 30 nonprofit and governmental organizations. In just a matter of weeks, they launched a public procurement platform that displays detailed information about all government contracts for supplies and services to fight COVID-19. Now journalists can run investigations, civil society is tracking spending, procuring entities can use the tools for better planning, and suppliers can conduct market analysis.
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Ukraine:
The Ministry of Health used procurement data for better planning, supplier engagement, civic monitoring and strategic communications. A coalition of government reformers and civil society has worked to put all of Ukraine’s COVID-19 related tenders in the public domain by law and make them available for ex-post monitoring and future audits. Civil society is actively monitoring contracts awards such as the prices for masks, gloves and ventilators. Transparency International Ukraine also improved their business intelligence tool and developed a separate analytical tool to track COVID-19 spending.
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