Links I Liked [Public Procurement]

1. Legal Aid contract(s) go pear shaped with dozens (hundreds?) of challenges. Whistleblower claims process was a shambles. Apparently, the tender document imposed 17 questions (sub)-divided into 3/4 parts each. Do you really need 50 different questions to identify the best bid (not bidder!) for the contract(s)? On the other hand, legal services are reaping what they sowed: if instead of lobbying for special treatment for ages (Part B Services anyone?), they had accepted to be a service like any other, both the MoJ and the bidders themselves would be used by now to the practice (and pitfalls) of procurement.

2. CJEU rattles the social considerations cage in RegioPost case. Albert cannot resist commenting on it at length and is preparing an event on the topic.

3. Programmer who bid $1 on 18F's open source contract experiment, speaks up. Again, I do not see anything wrong with his attitude and he garnered incredible levels of (free) publicity for his skills. Would this free publicity constitute a case of indirect State Aid in the EU? Nah...

4. Washington DC ponders more transparency to tackle corruption in public procurement. Open Contracting Partnership weighs in. On this side of the pond, claims that contract transparency is now stalled.

5. Cabinet Office considering Crown Marketplace, built around the Digital Marketplace platform. Would local government take it up?