How Complete Is Saint Lucia’s Published Procurement Record? A Census Audit of the Department of Finance Portal

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Abstract

Public procurement transparency depends on whether records reveal who bought what, from whom, for how much, when, and by what process. This fixed-date census audited Saint Lucia’s Department of Finance tender portal. On August 12, 2026, the search archive indexed 840 records, of which 831 detail pages were retrievable. Pages were coded for availability, core fields, award content, lifecycle linkage, timeliness, observable competition, supplier recurrence, agency variation, and record-ID patterns. Of indexed pages, 98.9% opened, and 96.0% of retrievable pages linked an attachment. Yet only 55.7% had a recoverable portal-reported Published date and 78.6% a usable reference. Among 152 award pages, supplier identity was disclosed on 96.1%, value and currency on 96.7%, duration on 98.0%, explicit method on 93.4%, and an award or signature date on 29.6%. Submitted-participant counts appeared on 116 of 133 potentially competitive pages (87.2%); rejection information appeared on 52.6%. Seventy awards (46.1%) linked with high confidence to an earlier portal solicitation. The highest-ID band was more complete than early bands, suggesting but not establishing temporal improvement. The portal is high-availability and document-rich but only partly analysis-ready. Because procurement information may be published through other channels, the study cannot estimate coverage of all government procurement, determine legal compliance, or infer wrongdoing from missing portal data.