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
- 1Extraction
Continuously pulls records from every SICOP source.
- 2Inventory
Documents every field and every relationship between sources.
- 3Unification
Brings the different formats together into a single data model.
- 4Validation
Checks types, consistency and traceability before the data is used.
- 5Anomaly detection
Evaluates 47 patterns across time, structure and behavior signals.
- 6Risk scoring
Combines 8 dimensions into an auditable score per institution.
- 7Preventive 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.