Public Procurement
Long-time readers of the blog will know of my views on transparency, particularly ex post transparency for contracts that have been awarded. There is an ongoing debate between the pros and cons of transparency, particularly its impact on competition. I am the opinion that publishing contracts in full should be
Public Procurement
It is now a full month after the announcement that Dyson had been handed out a contract for the development of a new ventilator from scratch. In the absence of any recent official update, Dyson itself put out a nice video on April 14th stating that some units had been
Public Procurement
While the UK comes to grips now with the lack of PPE, in Ireland the situation is somewhat different and the reason for that is this: “ ” Sometime in March, Ireland struck a huge deal with China for 13x the usual annual spend on PPE. I do not know the exact
Public Procurement
Most of the focus over the last month or so in the blog has been on the procurement of ventilators by the UK Government (#ventilatorgate) and how, in my view, the rules have been broken. There is, however, another elephant in the room and that is the personal protection equipment
Public Procurement
If #ventilatorgate was not enough of a procurement problem for the Government, the New York Times published an article last week about the purchase of COVID-19 tests that do not work. These are the famous antibodies tests which would 'soon' be in our hands a few weeks ago.
Public Procurement
Albert has once more looked into the sorrow state of the ventilator procurement process and coined an excellent name for the whole saga: #ventilatorgate. I think it is a perfect epitaph for the situation. On his most recent entry he looked into the responses of the Government to the FT
Public Procurement
The Financial Times published a piece last Friday taking aim at the process of sourcing more ventilators for the NHS. The author, Peter Foster, also posted a long twitter thread providing a few more details. The Government answered yesterday with a rebuttal posted on the Gov.uk website. The answer
Public Procurement
OpenOpps has a great thread on twitter looking into the purchasing activity of various national governments on the run up to COVID-19 lockdown: % increase in the volumes of Govt tenders published each week this year in UK (30 day comparison). Indicates Govt preparations started at beginning of Feb, some 6
Public Procurement
1. UK ventilator manufacturers protected from injury claims 2. A look into emergency procurement and beyond 3. General Motor’s first ventilators are ready for delivery 4. Feds will pay GM USD489M to make 30,000 ventilators by August 5. Coronavirus: Three quarters of public favour working with EU to
Public Procurement
I have been waiting to reply to Albert's volley on our ongoing discussion to give time for the dust to settle around the ventilator saga. I think it is fair to say we agree on the fact that the Dyson contract (as well as those for BlueSkies et
British academia
I have the luck to be facing the COVID-19 upheaval in academia from a comfortable position, holed up in a nice house, with my family and a comfy home office. I could easily have ended up stuck far away from my family had the shutters come down a week earlier,
Public Procurement
1. Emergency procurement for COVID-19: buying fast, open and smart 2. 5 procurement strategies for navigating the COVID-19 crisis from around the world 3. Portuguese contracting authorites have awarded €58M worth of COVID-19 related contracts directly [Portuguese only and gated] 4. Are the Albanian Government’s Secret Procruement Contracts Legal?