Few instruments in Colombian state contracting are as widely used — or as widely argued over — as the services contract, known locally as an OPS. It is the most common form of direct contracting: article 32, paragraph 3, of Law 80 of 1993 authorises it for activities related to the administration or operation of an entity, but only where there are not enough staff on the permanent payroll or where specialist knowledge is required. In practice, a large part of the state's workforce operates under this arrangement, renewed contract after contract for years.
The problem arises when an OPS stops being a contract for a specific task and becomes a disguised job. If the contractor keeps set hours, takes orders on how, when and where to work, and depends financially on the entity, this is no longer coordination between equals: it is subordination. And where there is personal provision of a service, subordination and pay, there is — under the principle that reality prevails over form — an employment relationship, whatever the parties chose to call the paperwork.
On 5 June 2026 the Ministry of Labour issued Decree 581 of 2026, adding a chapter to Decree 1072 of 2015 (the single decree for the labour sector) to tackle illegal outsourcing and labour intermediation. Although it is a labour rule, it bears directly on public entities, because many of them procure goods and services through third parties and through services contracts. The decree defines precisely when outsourcing is illegal and, above all, gives labour inspectors a list of indicators for detecting it.
Those indicators fall into two groups. The first points to the contractor's lack of any structure of its own: no real means of production, infrastructure or financial capacity, not bearing the risks of the business, or depending entirely on the contracting entity. The second points to the worker's subordination to the benefiting entity: taking instructions directly from it, being integrated into its organisation, keeping its hours or being subject to its disciplinary authority. Where third parties carry out an entity's permanent activities, the decree presumes an employment relationship with that benefiting entity, unless proven otherwise.
The consequences are far from minor. The sanctions regime provides for fines of up to 5,000 minimum monthly wages per infringement for as long as the situation persists, with aggravation for repeat offences, plus an order to formalise the affected workers. For temporary employment agencies and associated work cooperatives engaging in illegal intermediation, the measures extend to revocation of their licence or dissolution.
None of this is entirely new in substance: the Consejo de Estado's line was already clear. In unification judgment SUJ-025-CE-S2-2021, case number 05001-23-33-000-2013-01143-01 of 9 September 2021, the Second Section unified the criteria for recognising an employment relationship disguised behind a services contract: personal provision, continued subordination and pay must all be present. The same decision set 30 working days as the limit for a gap between successive contracts still to count as unbroken service, and clarified that health contributions paid by the contractor are earmarked public funds that are not refunded. What Decree 581 does is move that doctrine onto preventive and punitive ground: it is no longer only a matter of a judge declaring an employment relationship years later, but of an inspector being able to step in and fine beforehand.
What changes in practice? For public entities, the signal is emphatic: a legitimate OPS requires a contractor with genuine technical and administrative autonomy, subject matter that answers to a temporary or specialist need, and performance without subordination. Chaining services contracts together to cover posts that are really permanent stops being a grey area and becomes conduct with direct exposure to sanctions, on top of the potential fiscal and disciplinary liability of supervisors and spending officers. For the contractor, it strengthens their position: formalisation no longer depends solely on a long court case.
For the citizen watchdog and the journalist, the decree offers a new lens for reading SECOP II. When an entity concentrates dozens of identical services contracts, renewed year after year with the same people for permanent core functions, the alert is no longer merely budgetary: there may be a shadow payroll evading the state's employment obligations. That is precisely the kind of pattern that data intelligence on SECOP II makes it possible to identify at scale — cross-checking subject matter, repeat contractors and continuity over time — turning a hunch into a documented observation. At LuxIA we work so that those patterns stop hiding among thousands of records and come into plain view for whoever is watching.