When people talk about how long it takes public administrations to procure, the conversation usually revolves around technology, and that makes sense, because that is where the problem is most stark: an artificial intelligence model can change version and price several times while the procurement file meant to buy it is still being processed. But it would be a mistake to think this is an exclusively digital issue. Procurement timelines affect a home care service, a fleet renewal or a training programme just the same, and after many years of working with public administrations, I have come to believe that shortening them is one of the highest-impact changes the public sector can make.

The reason is simple: public administrations buy an enormous amount. In Spain, public procurement accounts for just over 11% of GDP and nearly a quarter of public spending, and behind those figures lies a good part of the services citizens receive. School cleaning, a city council's telephone helpline, medical transport, the software used to process a grant and park maintenance are, in many cases, delivered by contractors. The quality of a public service is, to a large extent, the quality of what is bought and how it is bought. No other decision a public administration makes touches all of its departments at once, which is why any improvement in the way it buys is multiplied.

‍The part of the cycle we don't measure

When we think about how long a tender takes, we almost always think about the months between the publication of the notice and the award. But that is the short part. The real purchase begins much earlier, the day someone in a department identifies a problem, and continues with securing a budget, the internal conversations to decide what is wanted, the drafting of the tender specifications, the reports and the back-and-forth with the legal and financial oversight teams, before reaching publication, award and formalisation of the contract. If you count that whole journey, it is not unusual for more than a year to pass, and often closer to two.

And almost no one measures it. The reference European indicator only calculates the time between the close of bids and the award, which in Spain is around 110 days compared with 74 in the median European country, and there is no public measurement of the preceding stage. We have even seen a large city council boast about the speed of its procurement by referring only to that visible part, when those of us on the other side know that sales teams reckon on at least a year and a half for a tender from that council to materialise. Without the full data, it is impossible to know where time is being lost and, therefore, where it can be recovered.

‍What would change if we bought faster

Buying fast is not the same as buying well, and a rushed purchase can end up as costly as an endless one. But it is hard to buy well if you don't buy on time, and I am convinced that a shorter cycle would mitigate many of the system's ills. If contracting a pilot took two months, we would not have to limit ourselves to the €15,000 minor-contract threshold to test something, and we could understand the cost and real use of a solution before buying it at scale. If replacing a supplier that fails to deliver did not mean starting another two-year cycle, terminating a contract for poor performance would stop being exceptional, and it would no longer make sense to bid low in the belief that no one will demand what was agreed. And if timelines were closer to those of the private sector, many good companies that today cannot afford to wait could contribute to healthcare, education or public management.

Not everything is dictated by law

The usual reaction to these timelines is to assume that the law does not allow anything faster. Some steps are required by the regulations, but they almost never say in what order to take them, what can be done in parallel, when it makes sense to engage with the market, or what can be reused from one file to the next. All of that is system design, and in most public bodies it is inherited through habit, without anyone having consciously decided it.

There is also a timing reason to act now. The proposed European procurement Regulation rightly backs more negotiation, more demonstrations and more interaction with suppliers, but if all of that is added to the system as it works today, the cycle could grow even longer.

What can be done now

Make better use of existing instruments, starting with dynamic purchasing systems, which allow the heavy lifting to be done once, specific contracts to be launched in weeks, and the system to stay open to new companies. Give someone responsibility for procurement as a whole, what other countries call a Chief Procurement Officer: not to manage individual files, but to measure the full cycle, sustain the relationship with the market and assess whether what was bought actually works. Build artificial intelligence into the process itself, from market analysis to monitoring contract performance. And, to put it bluntly, strengthen the procurement teams, which did not grow when EU funds arrived, with profiles that are not solely legal.

We have spent years treating procurement as a procedure to be complied with. But if a large part of public service is delivered through contracts, changing how, and at what pace, public administrations buy is public policy in the most literal sense: the kind with the greatest reach over what citizens receive, and one of the cheapest to put in place. It is enough to start by looking at the clock.