Links I Liked [Public Procurement]

1. The Crown Commercial Service wants help re-designing its digital services. My suggestion is to put all the damn procurement data available on a easily searchable database format. No, excel spreadsheets are not what I am thinking about. But that is for the ex-post, while the Digital Services Team is looking for help on what the actual service should look like and how it should operate. I think it is a great idea to have this "client centered" approach and other administrations (even in the UK) should take notice...

Having said that I have a queasy feeling about a new Request for Proposals idea. Much better to evolve what I developed a couple of years ago with the simplified open procedure than to enhance the attractiveness of non-competitive award procedures.

2. Speaking of data dumps, the "old" Contracts Finder is now available as an archive. Kudos for that.

3. Danger zones in the new Public Contracts Regulations 2015? Not necessarily the ones I would have chosen. For example I would consider the new "light touch" regime as highly dangerous area but hey, it brings "flexibility". I remain bullish that practice under the light touch regime will become worse, not better.

4. Interoperability will be key to make e-procurement work (in Spanish). Very, very true, particularly when we are talking about cross-border issues. Electronic solutions can as easily facilitate cross-border procurement if standards are use, though the opposite is true as well. Just imagine the web without HTML or email without an underlying standard. Minitel anyone?

5. Bad procurement behind the US Office of Personnel Management data breach? A 36 hour (!) turnaround for a $20 million credit report services contracts raises more than just eyebrows. Although the title is slightly misleading as the record turnaround time does not appear to have been for the underlying IT contract.