Public Procurement: Public Policies, Strategic Planning, and Behavioral

Abstract

This article addresses public procurement from a perspective that transcends the traditional formalistic approach of administrative law, conceiving it instead as a strategic instrument serving public policy and the general welfare.

Based on this premise, the paper examines two tools considered relevant for modernizing the procurement system in Argentina, tools that, to date, have received insufficient attention in practice.

The first is strategic planning: the State's capacity to anticipate its needs, intelligently program its processes, and rigorously evaluate its results, transforming the Annual Procurement Plan into something more than a mere formality. Contractual efficiency does not begin with the publication of the tender documents but rather with anticipating needs, budget planning, and the definition of government objectives.

The second is the incorporation of behavioral science into the design of procurement systems: the recognition that officials, bidders, and evaluators are not rational agents in the classical economic sense, but rather human beings subject to biases, routines, and pressures that condition their decisions in predictable and, therefore, modifiable ways.

A public procurement system that ignores how the real human being who operates it plans and makes decisions will be doomed to a permanent gap between its regulatory design and its actual functioning.