The NSW Labor government and the competition watchdog will use artificial intelligence to process massive amounts of data relating to contracts for public projects in a bid to identify suspicious patterns of collusion between companies bidding for lucrative tenders.

The Minns government and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission will form a new partnership to stamp out illegal “bid-rigging”, by which companies collude to raise prices on government contracts.

The new partnership, to be announced on Monday, is a direct outcome of discussions at the Commonwealth treasurer’s Economic Reform Roundtable last month.

NSW will use AI to analyse the huge amounts of contract documents, submissions and tender

data that the government receives as part of its procurement processes.

The

See Full Page