Characterization of the Chilean Public Procurement Ecosystem Using Social Network Analysis

“Mercado Público” is a Chilean electronic platform used for purchasing processes by Chilean public organizations for the last two decades. The main aim of this study is to characterize the Chilean public procurement ecosystem by using social network analysis to detect the main communities of suppliers based on who awarded the tenders. To do this, we use a methodology that first represents the bidder-supplier relationship as a bipartite graph using purchase order information. Then we project the bipartite graph onto a monopartite graph of suppliers. We end by detecting the main supplier communities using a modularity algorithm. When we applied this methodology to the large tender segment in the Chilean public procurement market over a period of four years, we successfully detected the five largest communities and the micro and small companies which had the greatest rate of participation over time.