Procurement Officials Survey 2024

The survey targeted key agents working in the Brazilian procurement process, whose actions are fundamental in determining the efficiency of public procurement. These agents include auctioneers, procurement managers, and planning officers. We targeted procurement agents from all Brazilian federal public organizations that conducted at least one purchase between 2019 and 2023.

We used administrative data from ComprasNet, the main federal government management information system for public procurement, to identify and obtain contact information for procurement auctioneers. This system records every bid and public contract from the federal government. For each bid, it is possible to identify and track (by unique national ID) the auctioneer of the bid, and the homologator associated with it — the individual administratively responsible for approving the results of the bidding process. Given that we have access to the universe of tenders from the federal government spanning from 2019 to 2023, we are able to identify and connect, to each bid, the entire set of auctioneers over this period. We identified and obtained contact information for 11,215 auctioneers. The MGI distributed the online survey to these individuals via SouGov, an internal messaging platform used by the federal government. Information on procurement managers and planning officers is unavailable in Compras- Net, preventing us from linking these individuals to specific bids or directly obtaining their contact information. To reach these public servants, we employed an indirect and non-targeted dissemination strategy. MGI sent private messages with the link to the survey to all users of the Procurement Portal of the Federal Government (Portal de Compras do Governo Federal) — an intranet for public servants involved in public procurement. It is important to note that every individual with access to the portal, regardless of their procurement role, received an invitation to participate in the survey. Consequently, we received responses to the survey from a wide range of procurement officers, including those originally targeted as well as others not in our target population, such as contract managers and homologators, has become mandatory since 2019.

Information on procurement managers and planning officers is unavailable in Compras- Net, preventing us from linking these individuals to specific bids or directly obtaining their contact information. To reach these public servants, we employed an indirect and non- targeted dissemination strategy. MGI sent private messages with the link to the survey to all users of the Procurement Portal of the Federal Government (Portal de Compras do Governo Federal)—an intranet for public servants involved in public procurement. It is important to note that every individual with access to the portal, regardless of their procurement role, received an invitation to participate in the survey. Consequently, we received responses to the survey from a wide range of procurement officers, including those originally targeted as well as others not in our target population, such as contract managers and homologators.