Public procurement functions are under pressure to scale. Data suggests many of them lack the structure to do so.

The data in the CARE 2025 Public Procurement Benchmark Report chimes with what we are hearing from procurement leaders in our everyday conversations. The transactional purchasing layer of procurement appears more mature digitally; but the strategic layer is struggling to keep pace with everything that is being asked of it.

Procurement is now expected to deliver on local economic value, supplier diversity, ESG, sustainability, resilience and (increasingly) AI governance outcomes that increasingly require a more strategic operating model.

The dataset, drawn from 751 public procurement entities, points to three consistent gaps: spend visibility, the post-award phase, and where procurement sits within the organization. One of the most striking findings is that only 21.1% of respondents currently allow AI use in procurement operations, and only 6.6% have a formal AI policy.

The positive: Procurement is successfully digitizing

At the transactional level, the work of procurement functions is continuing to successfully digitize. 

CARE finds 96% of public procurement entities now run purchase orders through systems, though this drops to 86.5% for formal solicitation (RFPs, RFQs, IFBs). The median time from requisition to purchase order is three days. 

There is still room to improve. Just 57.9% of agencies use technology for informal sourcing solicitations. This is why we’ve built Quick Quotes, which is designed to streamline this process and provide an easily accessible and auditable document trail. 

The opportunity: Becoming more strategic 

But the CARE benchmark reveals that procurement functions can become more strategic.

Just 57% of entities have a strategic procurement plan, and only 61% analyze procurement spend at all. Only 34% formally capture spend under management, meaning two thirds of public entities cannot tell you, using clean data, what share of their spend is actually under procurement’s control or influence.

The structure of the org chart also explains a lot. Where agencies have a Chief Procurement Office, the role generally sits one to two layers below the CEO (37% report one layer, 36% report two; only 4% report direct). It’s particularly striking that 55% of respondents say procurement is not part of the executive leadership team at all. 

The flip side is that when procurement does operate strategically it becomes one of the most direct levers a government leader has for delivering on their priorities. Every dollar a public agency spends is a policy decision on local economic development, supplier diversity, sustainability, or resilience. Whether those commitments actually show up in spending patterns depends on procurement teams’ day-to-day decisions.

Three ways to move forward

1. Give procurement a louder voice

The answer is not necessarily to reorganize every agency around a Chief Procurement Officer. But give procurement a stronger voice in high-level management decisions that depend on spending, supplier access, risk management, technology, and policy delivery. 

When procurement sits too far down in the organization, it often enters the conversation after key decisions have already been made. That limits its ability to shape better outcomes before public dollars are committed.

2. Prioritize spend-visibility

Without analysis of spending as a routine discipline, every other strategic aim is unverifiable. Using cooperative contracts, vetted catalogues, and purpose-built public sector marketplaces can help produce cleaner, more policy-relevant spend data when they are configured and used consistently. Given that only around two in every three entities analyze spend and only a third formally capture spend under management, it’s clear that digitization has to move beyond workflow automation and into structured spend intelligence.

3. Build the contract administration muscle

Build contract administration capability for after the initial procurement. Currently, only 27% of agencies provide contract administration training and 55% have no formalized contract administration policy at all. Without proper administration, even well-sourced contracts can under-deliver.

When procurement is involved beyond the award to track performance, manage relationships and course-correct early, contracts are more likely to deliver what they promised. This helps deliver better outcomes for entities and residents and reinforces procurement’s position as strategic driver of change.

The path ahead

The procurement leaders I speak to are not short of ambition. The challenge is that many are being asked to do more strategic work within systems and structures built primarily for transactional activity. That creates pressure on teams and makes consistent delivery harder. 

The opportunity is for procurement to become one of the biggest levers public-sector leaders have for local economic value, transparency, resilience and policy delivery. Dollars spent by agencies at local businesses recirculate two to four times more than those spent with national chains.

At Civic Marketplace, this is what gets us up in the morning – the evolution of procurement into a strategic lever. We’re helping entities use cooperative contracts, vetted supplier access, and purpose-built procurement technology to create clearer data, more efficient end-to-end workflows, and stronger procurement outcomes across the full procurement lifecycle. If any of this resonates with what you're seeing in your own organization, I'd love to have a conversation.

Book a time here on Brian’s calendar link