Our Early Stage Researcher Felippe Santos co-edited with his colleague Virgínia Lopes a book entitled “Compras públicas centralizadas no Brasil: teoria, prática e perspectivas” (“Centralized public procurement in Brazil: theory, practice, and perspectives”, Editora Fórum 2022, in Portuguese).

This book discusses some theoretical and practical aspects of centralized public procurement, i.e. collaborative public procurement by which contracting authorities join efforts, knowledge, and purchasing power to improve procurement processes and results, contributing to sustainability and public policies.

The book provides structured knowledge to inspire research, implementation, and improvement of centralized public procurement initiatives, including insights from Brazilian national and subnational governments’ practical experiences. Relevant discussions such as promoting sustainability through centralized public procurement are also presented by the book, based on multiple disciplinary approaches and highlighting the role of collaboration between internal and external stakeholders to reach public procurement’s (and consequently public policies’) goals.

A book discussing this theme through a Brazilian perspective is unprecedented, despite some efforts in research and practice over the country.

Book structure

The book was structured into four parts:

• Part 1: theoretical approaches, including organization and classification of centralized public procurement experiences and lessons learned from international experiences (including European ones).
• Part 2: technical reports from different experiences on Brazilian national and subnational levels, including drivers for and barriers to implementing centralized public procurement.
• Part 3: pathways to develop a centralized public procurement experience, including inputs from the new Brazilian public procurement law (from 2021) and themes such as sustainable public procurement, professionalization and public governance.
• Part 4: what’s next?, presenting debates on incorporating framework agreements and marketplace into Brazilian public procurement and including an essay on implementing a dedicated Brazilian Central Purchasing Body (imagined as a state-owned company at the national level).

Authors and chapters

The book has 23 chapters written by 50 authors, including professors, researchers, public procurement specialists, public managers, and other experienced practitioners.

Felippe participated as co-author of three chapters:

• Ch. 1: Modelos de centralização de compras na administração pública brasileira (Centralized public procurement models on Brazilian public administration), by Felippe Santos and Ciro Fernandes. Available online in open-access (in Portuguese).
• Ch. 11: Centralização das compras públicas na Empresa Brasileira de Serviços Hospitalares (Centralized public procurament in the Brazilian Health Services Company), by Felippe Santos and Ciro Fernandes.
• Ch. 23: Empresa Brasileira de Compras Públicas: um caminho possível? (Brazilian Public Procurement Company: a possible path?), by Felippe Santos, Daniel Marcolino, and Virgínia Lopes.

More information about the book is available at the publisher’s website (in Portuguese).