Prebases is an innovative initiative because it is the first platform in Latin America through which it is possible for citizens, civil society organisations, suppliers, and government to participate interactively in the discussion and elaboration of planning documents and bidding bases for the City's strategic or high-impact procurement procedures. This tool strengthens transparency, accountability,  and modernisation of public procurement, which helps in the transition to an open government, where citizens and government collaborate to achieve more efficient and better planned procurement, encouraging the acquisition of quality goods and services and promoting greater competition in tendering procedures. Prebases is the new digital tool that transforms the way public procurement is planned.

The partners of the initiative are citizens, civil society organisations, public servants, companies, and international organisations. For the co-design and ideation, the partners were suppliers, no profits, and citizens who, through interviews, helped to identify the needs and priorities of the tool. Among the collaborators, the Open Contracting Partnership should be mentioned as they donated 20,000 USD so that the company Glass could develop the tool according to the requirements identified.

Citizens, civil society organisations, and suppliers: They actively participate in the planning of the procurements of their interest, while being informed about upcoming tenders to which they can apply.

Public servants: Better knowledge of the market and of the supply of goods and services, strengthen the technical annexes and the bidding bases, promote competition and therefore procurement has a greater cost-benefit and resource savings are obtained.

Since its launch in February 2022 to date, the planning documents of 8 procurement procedures of four different spending units have been discussed, receiving more than 800 comments, suggestions and questions. In addition, those responsible for the procedures have integrated 39 comments issued by citizens, civil society organisations, or suppliers for the preliminary documents and technical annexes of their procedures, ensuring that citizen participation is important and heard in this type of exercise. Finally, the Prebases module has been consulted more than 500 times. It is expected that next year the number of processes under discussion will double and the number of interactions between suppliers, civil society organisations and citizens in the discussion of planning documents will increase by 25%.

One of the most important challenges faced by the Prebases initiative during its implementation has to do with the dissemination and knowledge of the tool. Since the Prebases discussion exercise is a new and proactive process that is not contemplated within the stages of a traditional procurement procedure, few units are aware of the tool and use it. Further, the dissemination of the initiative through social networks and government communication media has been limited. Given this situation, the Agency has sought to contact strategic allies that wish to carry out this type of exercise and has contacted suppliers on the register via email so that, in accordance with their business line and procedures, they can participate in the discussion on Prebase. In addition, the Agency has sought promotion with other national or international organisations, applying for awards and calls for proposals that provide this projection.

For the success of this strategy, it is indispensable that there are responsible spending units (URGs) willing to actively carry out this type of exercise, as well as citizens, suppliers and civil society organisations interested in actively participating in the construction of the City's procurement planning documents.

In technological terms, the implementation of the tool requires development and maintenance. However, Prebases is a digital tool that was developed in open source and free software, so it can be donated and adapted by other interested governments, saving design and development costs.

In terms of human resources, the initiative requires active staff such as back end and front end developers to maintain the platform and a user administrator to manage the uploading of information from the different URGs and provide solutions and response to the platform's users.

To date, eight months after the launch of the Prebases discussion strategy, the tool has not been replicated in other governments. However, as it is built in open source and free software, the application can easily be replicated and even donated and adapted to administrations that wish to implement this type of exercise that strengthens citizen participation in public procurement procedures. The potential for replicability of the tool is high, whether for local or even national governments. Currently, the Digital Agency for Public Innovation is in contact with the state governments of Sonora and Tamaulipas to donate various technological tools that it is in charge of, including the Transactional Public Procurement System "Tianguis Digital" and the Prebases initiative.

Promoting transparency, innovation, openness and citizen participation in procurement procedures through various strategies, initiatives or tools is a task that improves the performance of any government, democratises procurement and favours the transition towards open government.

Betting on strategies such as Prebases Discussion will always provide more benefits than challenges to public administrations, which is why the Digital Agency for Public Innovation, in order to improve the management not only of Mexico City, but of the entire region, seeks to promote developments and projects that can be replicated, donated and adapted to different contexts.

Prebases is the module of Tianguis Digital, which promotes citizen participation in the planning of strategic and high-impact procurement procedures for the CDMX, but it is expected to be the tool that will transform the way public procurement is planned throughout Latin America.F6.