The 'reverse procedure' in public contract awarding allows contracting authorities to prioritize the evaluation of bids over the verification of paperwork, which is only checked for the winning bidder. Since 2019, this procedure has been available for all open tenders for public contracts in Italy. This paper provides evidence on its usage rate and its effects in terms of reducing the length of procedures.
There is a growing trend in the use of reverse procedures, which are adopted more frequently by larger municipalities and in Central and Northern Italy. Furthermore, they are more common as the number of participants increases. Finally, public contract awarding using a reverse procedure is significantly shorter in duration (a median of 80 days compared with 120).