The Municipality of Sahuayo has launched a Digital Public Procurement One-Stop Shop, making it the first municipality in Michoacán and one of the first in Latin America to implement a fully paperless procurement system. This initiative positions Sahuayo at the forefront of using cutting-edge technology to streamline procurement processes, increase public spending efficiency, and strengthen local micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises. The platform was developed in partnership with Glass, a Silicon Valley-based technology company specializing in digitalizing public procurement processes.
The system is powered by Glass's G-Commerce platform, which is already used by local governments in the United States, federal agencies, and other Latin American governments. Following Mexico City's collaboration with Glass, Sahuayo becomes the first municipality in Mexico to adopt G-Commerce technology. With an annual budget of nearly $340 million Mexican pesos (approximately USD $17-18 million), Sahuayo manages strategic resources that previously relied heavily on manual, paper-based processes. In just two months of adoption, the digital platform has processed more than 700 purchase requests, transforming practices that traditionally required in-person paperwork and signatures into a fully digital, streamlined, and traceable process.
More than 45 active municipal departments have integrated the platform into their daily operations, including Public Spaces and Mobility, Public Safety, Water Services, Public Works, Education, Economic Development, Street Vending, Health, and Energy sectors. The rapid adoption across municipal departments demonstrates the system's effectiveness in replacing outdated bureaucratic procedures. The platform's intelligent supplier directory is designed to empower Sahuayo's local business community by allowing small shops, women-led enterprises, and other key contributors to the municipal economy to register and connect directly with government procurement opportunities.
The municipality aims to progressively onboard more than 60 local suppliers into the platform, creating an inclusive and competitive ecosystem where local businesses can participate transparently in government procurement. Alexander Morillo, Government Projects Lead at Glass, emphasized the significance of this partnership, noting that moving from manual to digital processes maximizes public resources and allows municipal leaders to focus on serving citizens rather than dealing with physical paperwork. The platform provides municipal staff with a purchasing dashboard where they can create requests, submit them with a single click, and track progress in real time through review and approval processes.
Sahuayo plans to progressively expand the platform to cover petty cash, emergency purchases, direct acquisitions, and larger-scale transactions, always within a digital, auditable, and transparent environment. This digital transformation positions Sahuayo as a regional benchmark for how technological innovation can drive local development and modern governance practices. Glass has supported more than 120 public agencies across the U.S. and Latin America in their transition to intelligent public procurement platforms. The company, which has processed over $7.4 million in public transactions, was selected by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) for its federal commercial platforms program and recently launched the first G-Commerce platform in Latin America with the Government of Puerto Rico.
