How do you solve a problem like procurement? Procurement is a key area in which corruption vulnerabilities result in major losses to the economy.

In this paper, we look at how identifying ‘red-flags’ in corruption procurement can work for Sri Lanka. This paper assesses procurement information disclosure levels on Sri Lanka’s E-Government Procurement platform (www.PROMISe.lk) and identifies the critical compliance gaps in information disclosure, and what improvements in disclosure requirements can be most productive to identify and pre-empt corruption risks in Sri Lanka’s public procurement.

We develop an analytical method that converts the guidance provided by the Open Contracting Partnership’s guidance on corruption red-flags in public procurement into a metric for assessing the marginal benefit of additional information disclosure on procurement. It then applies that metric to assess the consequences of disclosure shortfalls in Sri Lanka and makes strategic recommendations on increasing the mandated disclosure requirements.