Links I Liked [Public Procurement]

1. UK East Coast rail franchise expected to be scrapped 'in days'. For the third time in 10 years one should add...

2. Carillion used its suppliers to "prop up falling business model". 120 payment days are not really new or unexpected in the field of public procurement (and others - just check Amazon's payment terms and how it survives on free cashflow...)

3. Cabinet Office launches first GovTech competition.

 

4. How the embattled Home Office is spending our money on handling Brexit.

5. Canary Islands tilts procurement rules in favour of employers offering permanent contracts (Spanish only)

 

Links I Liked [Public Procurement]

1. Colombia could use some more competition in public procurement (Spanish only). Funny how Colombia understands that having one or only two bidders on each tender is a competition risk, whereas Portugal doesn't.

2. UK Government provides £20 million for govtech challenges. As I said before, probably a better way to look for innovation in public procurement than some other ideas out there.

3. The problems of PFI mount.

4. General Court decision delimiting obligation to assess abnormally low tenders, where contracting authority changes tenders (T-281/16)

5. The 10 main new features of Spain's new public procurement law (English).

 

 

Links I Liked [Public Procurement]

1. *That* audit report about public procurement Wales is getting some traction.

2. Royal Navy 'cannibalisation' on the rise.

3. Crown Commercial Service and Government Digital Service team up to simplify public sector contracts. (Great news!)

4. Some news about how low value contracts are dealt with under the new Spanish Public Procurement Law. (Spanish only)

5. Blockchange: Blockchain Technologies for Social Change.

Links I Liked [Public Procurement]

1. Canada among 10 WTO members airing concerns about Trump 'Buy American' order

2. GSA's Blockchain Blockbuster

3. How good are the opportunities published on the Digital Marketplace? A great "hot or not" take on contract postings.

4. World Bank publishes framework for disclosure in public-private partnerships

5. Spanish Parliament approves new public public procurement law (Spanish only)

Links I Liked [Public Procurement]

1. Spanish Government kicks out 5 bus companies from public procurement for abnormally low tenders. (Spanish only)

2. Can technology solve the problem of extra costs in procurement? (Spanish only) I suspect that is not going to happen (at least fully) unless technology solves the problem of incomplete contracts...for all contracts.

3. Learndirect under review by NHS procurement body.

 

Links I Liked [Public Procurement]

1. Some local councils in Portugal take up to 2,000 days to pay their suppliers (Portuguese only).

2. Navarra adopts new (regional) public procurement law (Spanish only).

3. The Commission gets what the Commission measures.

4. Which buyers award contracts to Small Businesses?

5. CJEU backs automatic exclusion of tenderers that had relied on no longer qualified third parties (C-223/16).

Link I Liked [Public Procurement]

1. US General Services Administration prototypes blockchain.

2. PFI is bankrupting Britain.  

3.  Portuguese CPB officials under fire for accepting trips paid by economic operator (Portuguese only).

4.  Critics see hole in Royal Navy’s new shipbuilding strategy.

5. Abnormally low tenders raise (legal) questions in Portugal (Portuguese only). 

Links I Liked [Public Procurement]

1. Chicago wants to modernise procurement.

2. Vigo Council migrates to Linux.

3. Public procurement: making the world a better place - one order at a time.

4. Lessons learned from attempting to fix tech procurement.

5. Cladding for Grenfell Tower was the cheaper, more flammable option.

Links I Liked [Public Procurement]

1. Public procurement is making the world a better place—one order at a time.

2. Learning Insights: Open contracting – a helping hand in Nepal.

3. The U.S. Has Forgotten How to Do Infrastructure.

4. Spain will create procurement oversight body. (Spanish only)

5. Trump's 'Buy American' will tighten the law on government contracts.

Links I Liked [Public Procurement]

1. A settlement under an existing public contract could result in the complete re-tendering of the contract

2. New Belgian public procurement directives implemented

3. Nationalists would implement transparent digital public procurement system in Malta. Well, it has to happen by 2018 anyway. Same party also wants to spend 25% of procurement spend with SMEs.

4. Indian Government creates "Make in India" local preference (20%) for public contracts. What can go wrong? 

5. Macau considers new public procurement law to "reduce tendency of public departments to split up service contracts, thereby avoiding the need for tendering". Funny how the same problems/strategies can crop up anywhere in the world...

Links I Liked [Public Procurement]

1. European Parliament publishes report on Brexit impact in public procurement.

2. Locked in by choice: How European governments are handling their Microsoft addiction.

3. Gonna Make You A (Contract) Offer You Can’t Refuse – Grayling Persuades Mace To Back Off HS2 Challenge.

4. Government Of South Australia Shares Guidance On Market Analysis In Public Procurement.

5. 'Irregularities' found in 200 public contracts in Spain and a hole of €6M (Spanish only).

Links I Liked [Public Procurement]

1. Corruption in public procurement: Siemens Greek Bribery Scandal by Penelope Giosa.

2. Stadium deals, corruption and bribery: the questions at the heart of Brazil’s Olympic and World Cup ‘miracle’

3. Contract headaches: The Long Beach Story

4. Quantifying the carbon footprint of the catering service of public schools

5. Transparency International (Spain) signs Integrity Pact with Madrid city council (Spanish only)

 

Links I Liked [Public Procurement]

1. Clean contracting at work: an example from Vilnius.

2. Slovenia ranks highest in ESIF data quality index by open.budgets.eu.

3. Police to examine possible bid-rigging in Toronto.

4. Public procurement in the CJEU's 2016 Annual Report.

5. EU wants to tackle public procurement ‘imbalance’ with foreign countries.

Links I Liked [Public Procurement]

1. Osborne-Clark asks for a change in how public procurement is carried out, particularly on innovation.

2. UK Government will impose 'Cyber Essentials' certificate to all its contractors handling sensitive data. "...Or equivalent" I would say until 2019.

3. Spanish authorities ask for information about economic operators hired by Catalan Government to prepare for secession (Spanish only).

4. Bidders will ‘say everything’ to win foreign aid contracts. Only foreign aid contracts? Really? And note what smaller suppliers have to say about framework agreements...

5. Update on Trump's "Buy American" policy.

Links I liked [Public Procurement]

1. Making Government business more accessible to SMEs - Two Years On.

2. Open Data and the fight against corruption in France (Report by Transparency International).

3. Is Joint Cross-Border Public Procurement Legally Feasible or Simply Commercially Tolerated? ~ A Critical Assessment of the BBG-SKI JCBPP Feasibility Study.

4. Donald Trump, Palantir, and the crazy battle to clean up a multibillion-dollar Military procurement swamp.

5. EU criticises new Australian Government procurement guidelines. Community benefits/social considerations, Australian style.

Links I Liked [Public Procurement]

1. Crown Commercial Service 'failed to deliver quality services'.

2. Architecture service contracts spark nepotism controversy at Spain's embassy in the US (Spanish only).

3. Can a requirement to furnish financial guarantees be considered a selection criterion based on economic and financial standing (C-76/16)?

4. Cloud-Hosted Software Is Helping to Clone Automated Government Processes.

5. Albert comments on the EU Commission's study on feasibility of joint cross-border procurement.

Links I Liked [Public Procurement]

1. Commission publishes report on Remedies Directive

2. How can open data portals become sustainable?

3. UK Government publishes Open contracting data guidance

4. How do EU Member States provide procurement remedies access to foreign bidders (ie, extra EU/EEA bidders)? Turns out it depends.

5. UK Government Communications framework agreement attracts small businesses. Fine, what about the success rates?

Interview with Francesco Decarolis about reputation and corruption in public procurement

Episode #31 of the best (and only?) podcast about public procurement is up. This time the interviewee is Francesco Decarolis from the Einaudi Centre for Economics and Finance and we spent some quality time talking about reputation and corruption in public procurement, including how a contracting authority nudged contractors to take their reputation more seriously.

Francesco was awarded a coveted ERC Starting Grant and will be doing in depth research in this area for the next few years.

Links I Liked [Public Procurement]

1. Big tech's grip loosens on UK.gov IT spend.

2. World Bank puts out it "Benchmarking Public Procurement 2017" report. Albert has the lowdown of it.

3. The best way to build big is to start small. Agreed, way too many initiatives in public sector are based in delusions of grandeur when there is plenty of low hanging fruit yet to be picked.

4. A more transparent public procurement (Catalan only). Mostly about how perspectives on public procurement have changed in Catalonia, albeit those reductions are fairly minor. 

5. Compliance and public procurement (Spanish only). I suspect this will be a bigger topic in the years to come as procurement gets dragged more and more into a compliance frameset.

Links I Liked [Public Procurement]

1. Spanish region of Castilla-Leon used social clauses in 76% of its contracts in 2016 (Spanish only). No indication of what exact type of clauses were used, their cost or how they were monitored but in addition to social clauses proper the region has reserved contracts.

2. Lawsuit seeks to ban Google from US Government contracts for refusing to hand over confidential information about its employees.

3. A new award for public procurement research is born (Spanish only).

4. Responsible procurement: general status, trends and implementation.

5. Concern as private firms line up to give free advice to the Tory Brexit Department. This is a textbook example of why I am so vociferously against making pre-market engagement legal and mainstream.