How the new National Strategy repositions software, data, and cloud computing as public policy tools for efficiency and delivery of rights.
*By Camila Cristina Murta
The National Public Procurement Strategy for Sustainable Development, established by Decree No. 12,771/2025, inaugurates a phase in which... state purchasing power It ceases to be merely an administrative mechanism and becomes explicit vector of public policy. This is a movement that repositions public procurement at the center of the national development agenda, consolidating, at the sub-legal level, what Law 14.133/2021 had already anticipated as a principle and purpose: to promote efficiency, innovation, integrity, and sustainable development through purchasing choices that are not neutral, but oriented towards broader socioeconomic and technological outcomes.
The narrative constructed by the decree is clear. If Brazilian state procurement and contracting legislation already stated, in its articles 5 and 11, that bidding processes should aim for sustainable national development, now the federal Executive branch is determining how this guideline will be implemented. The Strategy becomes a roadmap to guide specifications, annual procurement planning, judgment criteria, management, and performance evaluation of contracts. The reason is simple: each hiring represents an opportunity to influence the productive structure, strengthen technological chains, reduce inequalities, induce innovation, and expand the State's capacity to deliver effective public policies.
For the software sector and ABES (Brazilian Association of Software Companies), the Strategy arrives at a time of dissonance between the speed of digital transformation and the regulatory capacity of the Administration to recognize it as a development infrastructure. In recent years, market research and analysis have already shown that software, data, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing have become the core of state operations and not just a support service. Specialized literature, such as analyses produced by legal research centers and consultancies on the ENCP (National Strategy for Public-Private Partnerships), reinforces that, by qualifying technology as a cross-cutting axis of development, the Brazilian government is placing software and digital services at the center of the economic, social, environmental, and governance agenda.
THE economic perspective The strategy offered is particularly relevant. It seeks reindustrialization, strengthening of domestic productive capacity, and the induction of innovation, opening space for solutions developed in the country, or that promote local value creation, to be recognized as strategic. This is a significant change in how the State evaluates proposals, because it shifts the debate from simple price comparisons to the analysis of economic impact, scalability, and the generation of technological capabilities. For the software industry, this creates an opportunity, but also a responsibility: to demonstrate how its solutions deliver structural efficiency to the State, how they expand public digital maturity, and how they contribute to national technological autonomy. Recent legal studies highlight that sustainable procurement policies need to be technically sound to avoid competitive distortions, something essential when it comes to software, where the added value lies more in the product's intelligence than in physical inputs.
O social axis The Strategy expands the understanding of the role of technology in combating inequalities. By incorporating objectives such as digital inclusion, social innovation, equity, diversity, and the strengthening of impact economies, the decree invites the software industry to position itself as a partner of the State in expanding civil capacities and improving public policies. Analytics tools applied to health, education, social assistance, and public security cease to be seen as accessories and begin to represent mechanisms for expanding rights. The specialized literature on sustainable procurement highlights that social policies only become effective when accompanied by data, platforms, and means of continuous monitoring. Thus, the sector is now being held accountable for evidence, indicators, diversity policies, and capacity-building mechanisms that strengthen public institutions.
At the environmental axis, A paradigm shift, often ignored in the technology debate, is emerging: the digital environmental footprint. The Strategy prioritizes themes such as energy efficiency, the use of renewable energy, waste reduction, and mitigation of environmental impact in data centers and technological infrastructures. This consolidates a trend already highlighted in international studies and Brazilian analyses on green cloud: the recognition that intelligent digital architectures can reduce emissions and make environmental policies more effective. The software sector now faces the challenge of demonstrating how its products and infrastructure operate with a lower environmental impact, something that involves everything from metrics like PUE to engineering practices that eliminate idle consumption of cloud resources.
O management axis, This, in turn, is perhaps the most transformative for the sector. It articulates data governance, integrity, transparency, performance evaluation, regulatory innovation, and the improvement of the contracting structures themselves. Recent legal studies on the Strategy highlight precisely this point: public administration will only be able to put its social, economic, and environmental objectives into practice if it has technological systems that integrate data, automate purchasing routines, and allow for real-time monitoring of policy performance. It is along this axis that the convergence between Law 14.133/2021 and Decree 12.771/2025 becomes most evident. Annual procurement planning, preliminary technical studies, performance indicators, risk matrix, contract monitoring, and data governance align with a technological vision that demands interoperable platforms, cybersecurity, auditable AI models, and digital marketplaces capable of organizing offers, metrics, and compliance.
The movement that is being launched is of Reorganizing public procurement as an instrument for reconfiguring the State itself. For the software sector and its representative entities, this is the moment to take center stage in the debate, demonstrating that... Technology is not just an input, but the engine that allows all other aspects – economic, social, environmental, and management – to move beyond mere rhetoric and become a real capacity for delivery.. The Strategy, therefore, is not just a guideline: it is a call for the Brazilian digital ecosystem to assume a leading role in designing a more efficient, secure, innovative, and just State.
Notice: The opinion presented in this article is the responsibility of its author and not of ABES - Brazilian Association of Software Companies
Article originally published on the IT Forum website: https://itforum.com.br/colunas/estrategia-nacional-de-compras-publicas-por-que-software-dados-e-nuvem-deixaram-de-ser-apenas-despesa/
Bibliographic references
BRAZIL. Law No. 14,133, of April 1, 2021. Law on Bidding and Administrative Contracts. Official Gazette of the Union, Brasília, DF, April 1, 2021.
BRAZIL. Decree No. 12,771 of 2025. Establishes the National Public Procurement Strategy for Sustainable Development. Official Gazette of the Union, Brasília, DF, 2025.
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MATTOS FILHO, VEIGA FILHO, MARREY JR. E QUIROGA ADVOGADOS. National public procurement strategy for sustainable development: legal and institutional impacts. São Paulo, 2025.
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