Morocco is preparing to bring artificial intelligence into the oversight of its public procurement system, in a pilot initiative that brings together the Court of Auditors, regional audit courts and the World Bank. The goal is to catch irregularities faster and across a far wider pool of contracts than manual audits currently allow.
At the heart of the project is a prototype tool designed to process and analyze large volumes of procurement-related data. It will be built to scan the full range of documents tied to a public contract, terms of reference, bid-opening records, offer evaluation reports and scoring grids, and flag details that warrant closer scrutiny.
The system’s core task will be spotting clauses that could distort competition or diverge from the rules governing how public contracts are awarded. That kind of review, when done by hand, is painstaking work that forces audit teams to rely on limited samples rather than exhaustive checks.
Under the project’s published timeline, companies interested in building the solution have until September 10 to submit their bids. The initiative is currently at the prototype design and testing stage.
The ambition behind the project is a shift in scale. Rather than reviewing a handful of files, financial oversight bodies could run an initial automated pass across the bulk of public contracts, then sort them by risk level based on the indicators the algorithm picks up. Files flagged as most sensitive would then be routed to in-depth human review.
The automated analysis will also cover the substance of tender documents themselves, looking for clauses that could be discriminatory or unduly narrow the field of competition, as well as checking whether digital records match the original paperwork.
One point stands out. The system will carry no decision-making authority of its own. Its role stops at generating alerts backed by data and sources, verifying them and issuing a final ruling remains squarely in the hands of the Court’s magistrates. Artificial intelligence, in other words, is being cast as a support tool, not a replacement for human judgment.
If the pilot proves successful, Morocco intends to roll the technology out more broadly, widening the scope of its financial oversight and speeding up the handling of its bulkiest case files, while still channeling human expertise toward the contracts that raise the most questions. For institutions tasked with financial control, it is a bid to keep pace with procurement procedures that keep growing more complex.