Colombia does not need to wait for fully automated procurement to start using AI. In fact, it should not.
The pre-contractual stage is an obvious place to begin.
Public entities already spend substantial time preparing needs assessments, market studies, legal, technical and financial structuring, risk matrices, draft procurement documents and bid conditions.
AI can support all of those tasks.
It can also assist evaluation teams by reviewing eligibility documents, identifying inconsistencies, organizing large volumes of information and supporting the preliminary assessment of economic offers.
The boundary, however, must be clear: AI may assist the analysis, but it must not replace professional judgment or decision-making.
Evaluation committees, contracting officers and competent officials must remain fully responsible for the conclusions they adopt and the decisions they make.
This is not about automating public procurement. It is about giving public officials better tools to make better, faster and more consistent decisions.
The technology is available. The legal framework does not require us to wait. What Colombia now needs is guidance, controlled implementation and institutional leadership.
And there is another particularly promising application in the pre-contractual stage: document authenticity.
Can AI-assisted verification help determine whether documents submitted by bidders were actually issued or executed by their purported signatories—and whether foreign apostilles, legalizations or consular certifications are genuine?
That will be the subject of a coming post.