Brexit
The UK Government published recently a guidance note on the potential impact for public contracts access in case there is no deal with the EU before March 29 2019. There is not really much actionable information and perhaps calling it “guidance” is a slight misnomer as the document is more
Public Procurement
Liz David-Barret and Mihaly Fazekas have a new research project called Curbing Corruption in Government Contracting, funded by the Department for International Development Anti-Corruption Evidence Programme. The project aims to look at how corruption can manipulate procurement and strategies to identify variables, patterns and trends that may indicate
Public Procurement
The House of Commons Library has just published an interesting new briefing paper on public procurement and contracts. It is an introductory text, but one that sets up the scene well to explain how public procurement works in the UK. The briefing paper can be found here.
Public Procurement
Arecent decision by the Technology and Construction Court (Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust v Lancashire County Council [2018] EWHC 1589) is a tour de force on how contracting authorities are often still unable to deal properly with the need to have good decision making models *and* keeping track of their
Public Procurement
Here's an article (in Spanish) that caught my eye this morning. A couple of interesting tidbits: "The Spanish cleaning companies Association and the Unions trust that the new Public Contracts Law covers labour costs and to guarantee the social rights of workers in all tenders from the
blockchain
I came across this paper on Hacker News yesterday and decided to have a look at it since it merges two of my interests: distributed ledgers and procurement. The paper by Hardwick, Akram and Markantonakis proposes a theoretical framework for a tendering system based on smart contracts, running on the
Public Procurement
The Public Accounts Select Committee has published a report into the risk assessments of Carillion in the run up to its failure. Here's a snippet: "The Carillion assessments show that: * Although Carillion had been rated Amber owing to performance against contracts with the Ministry of Defence and
Public Procurement
Somehow I missed this excellent blogpost by Peter Smith last week about the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee hearing on public sector outsourcing. The whole thing is worth reading, but here's an interesting bit: "Asked about contracts that are in difficulties, “we have re-priced in
Public Procurement
Very interesting piece on Wired about how Barcelona is dealing with smart city surveillance, even if I do not buy the whole political worldview.* On the procurement side, this bit at the start caught my eye: “Now we have a big contract with Vodafone, and every month Vodafone has to
Public Procurement
In the wake of Carillion's implosion, we are coming to see the internal workings of the UK Government in a light that might be surprising or unexpected for those looking from the afar. The most recent piece of information comes in today's Telegraph and is connected
Public Procurement
The European Commission has just published earlier today a lengthy guidance document on procurement of innovation. It is welcome since procurement of innovation is the kind of approach (policy? idea?) that is useful mostly for the top 1% of procurers and even then, just some of the time. As such,
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