UK uses AI to tackle ‘bid-rigging’ collusion in public procurement contracts

The U.K’s competition authority already has a lot on its plate in terms of tackling Big Tech’s growing reach across the technological spectrum, but closer to home it’s dealing with a different kind of anti-competitive threat — one it reckons AI is well-equipped to address.

As per a Financial Times’ report this week, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is tackling so-called “bid-rigging” in public procurement contracts through a pilot program that applies AI to large swathes of data, to identify scenarios where competing companies may have colluded to manipulate the bidding process and artificially inflate costs.

“We know that procurement markets are at significant risk of bid-rigging,” CMA chief Sarah Cardell (pictured above) told the FT. “We’ve now got the capability to be able to scan data at scale, bidding data at scale, to spot anomalies in that bidding data, and to identify areas of potential anti-competitive conduct.”

The news comes shortly after the CMA announced an inquiry into bid-rigging for school roofing contracts, while last year it doled out fines of £60 million ($75 million) to 10 construction firms for colluding on contract bids