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Case study

Public procurement intelligence for Costa Rica's Comptroller General

Data architecture and artificial intelligence to move SICOP oversight from reactive to preventive.

Records analyzed
>2.4M
Anomaly patterns
47
institutional risk dimensions
8
time to compute a risk score
<1 s

Summary

Context

Public procurement oversight was reactive: irregularities surfaced after the damage was done, with data spread across different sources and taxonomies.

Outcome

Risk becomes visible before it turns into a legal case: auditors act on signals, not on findings.

The challenge

Why oversight arrived too late

  • Data spread across different sources and formats
  • Classifications that change between institutions
  • Irregularities detected after the damage was done
  • Systemic risk patterns nobody modeled

Sources and architecture

Seven sources, seven stages

Sources

  • Solicitations
  • Awards
  • Contracts
  • Addenda
  • Supplier registry
  • Sanctions
  • Institutional data

Pipeline stages

  1. 1
    Extraction

    Continuously pulls records from every SICOP source.

  2. 2
    Inventory

    Documents every field and every relationship between sources.

  3. 3
    Unification

    Brings the different formats together into a single data model.

  4. 4
    Validation

    Checks types, consistency and traceability before the data is used.

  5. 5
    Anomaly detection

    Evaluates 47 patterns across time, structure and behavior signals.

  6. 6
    Risk scoring

    Combines 8 dimensions into an auditable score per institution.

  7. 7
    Preventive monitoring

    Shows events, trends and peer comparisons to decision makers.

AI layer

47 patterns and 8 risk dimensions

Rules catch the obvious and models catch the subtle: unusual award velocity, supplier concentration, out-of-range prices and addendum sequences that often precede irregularities. Each institution gets a score that breaks down into 8 dimensions.

8-dimension compositeComposite 62/100

  • Contracting velocity78
  • Supplier concentration62
  • Price dispersion71
  • Addendum exposure55
  • Sanction proximity34
  • Transparency posture82
  • Control maturity49
  • Signal density67

Institutions

12 institutions, anonymized

Risk score for each institution, on a 0 to 100 scale.

low · 3 · medium · 4 · high · 3 · critical · 2

  • low

    Institution A

    23

  • low

    Institution B

    31

  • low

    Institution C

    28

  • medium

    Institution D

    47

  • medium

    Institution E

    52

  • medium

    Institution F

    58

  • medium

    Institution G

    49

  • high

    Institution H

    71

  • high

    Institution I

    76

  • high

    Institution J

    68

  • critical

    Institution K

    84

  • critical

    Institution L

    91

Project results with anonymized institutions.

Impact

What changes for decision makers

Preventive oversight

Risk is visible before it turns into a legal case: action is taken on signals, not findings.

Faster decisions

Decision makers see risk on the first screen and reach a defensible decision in minutes, not weeks.

Verifiable transparency

Every score traces back to its components, and every component to a record.

Facing a similar challenge?

An introductory conversation identifies how to apply this approach to your data.