Lowest bid disqualified (R036)¶

The lowest submitted bid is disqualified, while the award criterion is price only.

Methodology¶

A contracting process is flagged if:

There are one or more active awards.
There are one or more valid bids with amounts.
The lowest submitted bid is disqualified.

Example

The Public Works Department sets the award criterion as lowest price. FairDeal Inc. submits a bid of $100,000. BribeCorp submits a bid of $111,111. The Public Works Department disqualifies the bid from FairDeal Inc.

Why is this a red flag?

A corrupt buyer can award the pre-determined bidder by disqualifying lower-priced bids.

Based on “The lowest bid is rejected almost inexplicably” in Fraud in Public Procurement: A collection of Red Flags and Best Practices, “Lowest bidder not selected” in Common Red Flags of Fraud and Corruption in Procurement, and “Award to other than lowest qualified bidder” in Guide to Combating Corruption & Fraud in Infrastructure Development Projects.

Output¶

The indicator’s value is always 1.0.

Configuration¶

The indicator is not configurable.

Exclusions¶

A contracting process is excluded if:

Prices are predetermined by the buyer.

Demonstration¶

Input

{"ocid":"F","bids":{"details":[{"status":"disqualified","value":{"amount":1,"currency":"USD"}},{"status":"valid","value":{"amount":2,"currency":"USD"}}]},"awards":[{"status":"active"}]}

Output

$ ocdscardinal indicators --settings docs/examples/settings.ini --no-meta docs/examples/R/036.jsonl
{"OCID":{"F":{"R036":1.0}}}