Almawave S.p.A.

06/17/2025 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 06/17/2025 03:38

Public tenders and AI: how to simplify processes for public administrations and businesses

Public tenders and AI: how to simplify processes for public administrations and businesses

Artificial Intelligence

17 June 2025

Every year, public institutions and organizations manage hundreds of complex procedures to award contracts for works, services, and supplies through public tenders.

At the same time, companies dedicate specialized staff and significant resources solely to identifying relevant tenders and handling the extensive documentation required to take part.

It's a demanding but essential task-for both the public sector and private enterprises.

However, what changes when AI and generative AI get involved?

How can emerging technologies help streamline and speed up the process-whether it's searching for tender opportunities, drafting and reviewing documents, or checking compliance with laws and regulations?

Digitalization and new technologies: the future of public tenders worldwide

Across the globe, governments are turning to artificial intelligence to transform the way public procurement is managed.

From digital-first regulations in Europe to grant-making innovation in the US, AI-particularly generative AI-is reshaping how institutions design, manage, and evaluate tenders.

In Italy, for instance, Legislative Decree 36/2023 introduced a new Public Procurement Code, making digitalisation mandatory across the entire lifecycle of public contracts. A national e-procurement system, led by the National Anti-Corruption Authority (ANAC), now supports these efforts. In 2023 alone, over 1.65 million procurement procedures were launched through digital platforms, exceeding €100 billion in value.

In the UK, the Cabinet Officerecently issued guidance (Procurement Policy Note 02/24) on the responsible use of AI-particularly generative AI-in public procurement.

Meanwhile, in the US, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)is testing AI tools to support environmental grant applications through its Thriving Communities Grantmaking Program.

This trend is echoed in policy circles as well. The OECDhas underscored AI's potential to improve public sector performance-boosting efficiency, responsiveness, and transparency.

Of course, adopting AI in high-stakes public processes raises concerns-from model accuracy to bias and data privacy. But with the rapid evolution of more secure, responsible large language models (LLMs), the outlook is increasingly optimistic.

Creating public tenders: what challenges do institutions face?

When generative AI became publicly accessible, it quickly became clear that it was particularly well-suited to support institutions in drafting public tenders.

But why exactly? Tenders are, by nature, highly complex, time-consuming, and costly to prepare-in terms of both resources and personnel. The same goes for companies looking to secure public contracts, as participating in a tender often involves a lengthy and resource-intensive process.

Let's take a closer look at some of the biggest challenges AI could help us tackle more efficiently:

  • Excessive volume of documentation

Drafting a public tender involves the processing and analysis of a wide range of technical, legal, and administrative documents such as regulations, sector-specific standards, technical specifications, tender guidelines, contract templates, minimum technical requirements, and environmental or social clauses. Each procedure requires consulting up-to-date national and EU legislation, reviewing similar tenders already published, and producing documents that are coherent, legally sound, and complete. This volume of content places a heavy cognitive load on teams and significantly slows down timelines, increasing the risk of omissions, inconsistencies, or contradictions.

  • Slow, repetitive, and error-prone manual checks

Currently, the vast number of documents involved is still reviewed and consulted manually-typically by legal or administrative teams. These are time-consuming and repetitive processes, prone to oversight and human error, which can delay both the publication of the tender and the evaluation of the submitted bids.

  • Risks of regulatory non-compliance

Public procurement regulations are constantly evolving. The consequences of a compliance error can be serious. Companies risk being excluded from the procedure, while public authorities may be forced to cancel contract awards and deal with legal challenges.

  • Lack of transparency and standardization

Despite ongoing efforts at the European level to harmonize procurement processes, the lack of shared standards in drafting tenders remains a major challenge. Each public body tends to use different structures and language in their documents, often relying on management systems that aren't interoperable. This fragmentation makes it difficult to reuse content, compare tenders, and ensure consistent participation from businesses-who often face constantly shifting procedures.

Creating public tenders with AI support: benefits for public administrations

Generative AI can never be seen as a substitute for the legal and technical expertise of the professionals involved in drafting a tender. Rather, it can serve as a powerful support tool throughout all stages of the tender's design and management.

Similarly, it can help reduce complexity, automate repetitive tasks, minimize errors, and standardize processes.

Let's take a closer look at the key benefits for public administration:

  • Automate repetitive tasks: AI can streamline and speed up many manual activities, such as preparing tender documents based on simple guidelines or drafts.
  • Faster and more reliable checks: Through natural language processing (NLP), documents can be automatically reviewed. AI can help legal teams analyze similar tenders more quickly, suggest templates, classify requests-even in different languages-and detect errors or inconsistencies. This would reduce manual work by automating the entire process.
  • Support in evaluating suppliers and companies: AI can gather and cross-reference data from multiple sources to assist and speed up the verification process of the stability and integrity of the companies competing in the tender.
  • Continuous regulatory compliance: AI, connected to the internet and trained on constantly updated documents, can automatically monitor legislative changes at the international level and ensure tender documents and application reviews stay aligned with current regulations.
  • Impartiality, transparency, and fraud prevention: When connected to appropriate data sources consolidated into a single knowledge base, AI can help evaluate proposals based on unbiased criteria, quickly identify conflicts of interest in applications, and automatically verify integrity requirements. AI can also assist public agencies in detecting potential illegal activities, preventing irregularities, and even uncovering suspicious behavior linked to organized crime.

Participating more efficiently in public tenders: Benefits for businesses

While designing and managing effective public tenders is challenging for public agencies, participating in them is just as demanding for companies.

They need to verify that their business meets all the required qualifications; find, evaluate, and complete all necessary documents; and often draft texts in languages other than their native one.

These tasks are resource-intensive, consuming significant amounts of both time and human effort.

AI can make a difference here as well.

  • Quick identification of relevant tenders: AI-based tools are already being adopted internationally to help companies find the most suitable public tenders aligned with their services. By analyzing the history of tenders a company has participated in, AI can simulate likely scenarios and recommend only those bids with the highest chances of success.
  • Real-time evaluation of minimum requirements and eligibility criteria: With AI, those handling tenders within a company can quickly compare the tender's minimum requirements and eligibility criteria against their own documents, ensuring they only invest time in bids where participation is viable and worthwhile.
  • Assisted document generation: The latest large language models (LLMs), combined with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) techniques, can support staff in drafting all the necessary documentation to participate in a tender. Tools with conversational interfaces allow professionals to quickly find the most relevant documents in the knowledge base (PDFs, images, videos) or online-with links to sources-compare them, and draft texts in multiple languages more efficiently, reducing typos and errors.

Tender Smart Assistant: the tool to support the drafting of public tenders

Almawave has long supported innovation and process simplification within public administrations using new technologies, with public tenders quickly emerging as a key priority.

This is why Almawave developed Tender Smart Assistant-a solution that leverages advanced text comprehension tools and generative AI to help public administrations draft tender drafts and other procurement documents more easily, securely, and reliably.

Tender Smart Assistant is built on the combination of Velvet and Discovery Experience, Almawave's most advanced proprietary technologies:

  • AIWave - Discovery Experience:AIWave is a modular PaaS (Platform as a Service) designed to simplify AI adoption across public and private business processes with an efficient low-code/no-code approach.

Tender Smart Assistant leverages the AIWave Discovery Experience module, an app that streamlines information search and exploration, allowing users to easily access data, concepts, and documents through a clear, search-bar interface. In other words, it ensures simple adoption and an optimized user experience.

  • Velvet:Velvet is the generative artificial intelligence powering Discovery Experience. It's a family of Large Language Models (LLMs) developed entirely in Italy on proprietary architecture, optimized especially for the Italian language, with a strong focus on sustainability and compliance with European ethical and legal standards.

Moreover, Tender Smart Assistant is a fully customizable solution, tailored specifically to meet the unique needs of each client.

This way, public administration employees will have an innovative tool for drafting tender drafts and procurement documents, as well as for verifying the compliance of received technical bids based on regulations and required criteria.

Solutions like this simplify the work of public administrations by offering multiple functions:

  • Conversational drafting of your tender: Interact with the AI in natural language to define all the tender's characteristics based on objectives, budgets, and legal requirements.
  • Questions to define tender specifications: Ask the AI specific questions and receive precise answers to develop every aspect of the tender, including the regulations and technical specifications.
  • Editable access to the generated tender draft: Based on your inputs, the AI will create a draft document that you can directly edit to make your corrections. It will feel like collaborating on the same text.
  • Text revision and enhancement:Make edits and suggestions by interacting with the AI via chat, with direct access to any sources and documents used by the generative AI.
  • Support in the next phase:By automating compliance verification, AI supports a quicker and more reliable evaluation of technical submissions, accelerating contract awards.

Here are the main advantages for Public Administration:

  1. Simplification and automation of repetitive processes: Repetitive and manual tasks such as research, verification, and checks can be streamlined and automated by generative AI. This brings a dual benefit by also helping to reduce errors and inaccuracies.
  2. Faster turnaround times: Generating texts, reviewing drafts, performing checks, and comparisons will be greatly accelerated, shortening tender timelines and boosting overall public administration efficiency.
  3. Use of natural language: Employing a conversational interface in natural language allows users to interact with the AI quickly and easily, in their native language. For professionals and specialists, this means having a solution capable of handling specific technical language when needed. For collaborators, it means being able to use the tool without requiring any technical training.
  4. Optimized user experience: For LLMs to be truly effective, they must be accessible through clear and simple interfaces. Integrating the full power of Velvet within the Discovery Experience search interface ensures the solution is fully usable by operators and professionals at any skill level.

With speed, accuracy, and transparency more important than ever, AI is set to become a trusted partner for public institutions. The tools are here-it's time to put them to work.

Discover how to digitize your tenders with Tender Smart Assistant.

Learn more on our website.

Almawave S.p.A. published this content on June 17, 2025, and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed via Public Technologies (PUBT), unedited and unaltered, on June 17, 2025 at 09:38 UTC. If you believe the information included in the content is inaccurate or outdated and requires editing or removal, please contact us at support@pubt.io