The mandatory use of the National Public Procurement Portal (PNCP) to publish public procurement data for all municipal, state and federal entities represents a step forward in the centralization of information. However, this analysis by Transparência Brasil shows that the low quality of the data currently collected and made available on the platform is not sufficient to meet the requirements of the New Tenders and Contracts Law.

The diagnosis obtained from the analysis of 145,000 items of medicines on the PNCP database reveals the lack of data standardization. This makes it impossible to use the platform to search for the best price for a medicine to be purchased and, consequently, to promote more efficient medicine procurement.

• The portal still doesn’t offer validation mechanisms to prevent inconsistent or incomplete data from being entered;
• In some contracts, it is impossible to know whether dipyrone with a concentration of 500mg or 1g has been purchased, and whether it is in liquid solution or tablets;
• Inconsistencies were found such as unrealistic dates, missing data and outdated fields on the status of the purchasing process;
• Transparency Brazil recommends the immediate need for improvements in the processes of data insertion, validation and modeling.