One of the critical elements of the entire procurement cycle is the design of technical specifications. These in the procurement tender documents present the detailed definition of what the company or Contracting Entity – in cases where it is a public procurement – intends to acquire or buy.
Thus, the technical specifications must be clear and objective so that potential suppliers of goods, services or public works contracts know exactly what they must supply in the context of the tender that has been opened. Another crucial aspect that must be included in the design of the technical specifications is that they have to be generic enough to allow several proposals, but also specific enough to define what is necessary for the procurement process to be above all transparent and encourage the participation of as many suppliers of goods, services and public works contracts as possible in public procurement tenders.
The monitoring that the Public Integrity Center has carried out on public procurement reveals that the above-mentioned assumptions have sometimes been overruled, as shown by the example in the box below, taken from the supplement on public contracting of the newspaper Notícias of the 4th of November of 2015.
