Public procurement is facing two major shifts. The Procurement Act has increased expectations around transparency, governance and accountability, while a new wave of AI tools is changing how teams manage their processes.
The Act places greater emphasis on demonstrating how decisions are made, with contracting authorities required to maintain clear records and provide greater transparency throughout the procurement process. Agentic AI goes beyond generating content or making recommendations. It can take actions, complete tasks and support decision-making within defined boundaries.
There is real potential here, but procurement teams also need confidence that AI is being used in a way that supports governance and robust decision-making. AI can only add real value in procurement if it understands how teams actually evaluate bids, including the methods they use, the governance around decisions and the rationale they need to demonstrate.
Without that context, AI may help with individual tasks, but it will struggle to support the judgement, consistency and governance that sit behind a well-run evaluation process.
At the same time, suppliers bidding for public sector contracts are increasingly exploring how AI can support bid preparation, helping them produce responses faster and at greater scale. This could help more SMEs participate in procurement, but it also changes the challenge facing evaluation teams.
Growing supplier adoption is changing evaluation
AI use among suppliers is increasing both the volume and speed of submissions, with tools making it easier to generate responses at scale. Bolton Council has reported rising bid volumes linked to AI-assisted bidding.
This does not just mean more submissions to review. It changes what evaluation teams are dealing with. As responses become more polished and, in some cases, more similar, evaluators need to be even more confident that every bid is being assessed consistently against the published criteria.
The technology may be changing, but one thing hasn’t changed. Procurement teams still need to be able to explain how and why decisions were made. This is particularly important as public sector organisations continue to focus on transparency and accountability. Evaluation decisions need to be fair, consistent and supported by a clear rationale, regardless of whether AI has played a role in preparing submissions or supporting the evaluation process.
As procurement teams explore how AI can support evaluation, the focus should be on ensuring it reflects how evaluation works in practice, rather than relying on generic assumptions about the process.
AI is at its most valuable when it supports evaluators, helping teams manage information more effectively, improve consistency and make better-informed decisions while keeping professional judgement at the centre of the process. Within Commerce Decisions’ AWARD® evaluation software, this means helping teams structure information, create clearer evaluation records and improve consistency throughout the process, while keeping accountability firmly with the organisation.
There’s also a growing focus on being more selective about where AI genuinely adds value, rather than adopting it for its own sake. The emphasis is shifting towards practical improvements that strengthen consistency, confidence and control, especially as scale increases.
Organisations such as Commerce Decisions, with deep experience in public sector evaluation, are part of that conversation, helping teams think through how AI can be used safely and sensibly within real-world public procurement processes.