HORIZON Europe - CEDAR

e are participating in the EU CEDAR Project – Common European Data Spaces and Robust AI for Transparent Public Governance Project. Specifically, we are part of the Slovenian pilot project, Transparent Management of Slovenian Public Healthcare Funds. The goal of the project is to digitize the procurement process for low-value tenders in the healthcare sector and to detect and identify links and risks of corruption or fraudulent practices with the help of artificial intelligence.

In public procurement in Slovenia, low-value tenders (tenders for goods and services of a value lower than 40,000 EUR, and for construction projects of a value lower than 80,000 EUR) are particularly problematic. This is because such tenders are less regulated and consequently done in a less standardized manner. In the Slovenian healthcare sector, each hospital manages its low-value tenders with its practices, approaches, and largely outdated technology. Each hospital publishes several such low-value tenders each day, without any schedule or system in place. Most often, these are published in PDF format on the hospital’s website. Bids are submitted via email, not through a procurement platform. Consequently, real-time monitoring of procurement practices is not possible, and any fraud analysis can only be done post-factum. This creates many opportunities for fraud.

The pilot aims to digitize the existing archive of historical tenders and bids, encompassing documents in diverse formats and stored in various locations. This transformation involves converting them into rich metadata and integrating them with external sources such as open data, public data, and CEDs (Common European Data Spaces). The objective is to facilitate their analysis for pattern identification, specifically to detect potential fraudulent activities. Through this initiative, CEDAR will modernize the procurement process for low-value tenders within the healthcare sector, contributing to a more transparent governance of public funds in Slovenia.

The impacts will mostly manifest in increased quality and safety of public healthcare services, an increase in the speed of the procurement process, and a reduction in the misappropriation of public funds.

CEDAR is funded by Horizon Europe, the EU’s key funding program for research and innovation.