Five bold public contracting reforms to improve public services in five cities
Oct 17, 2019
Five teams of public contracting reformers from Buenos Aires, Ecuador, Mexico City, Moldova, and New Orleans have been selected to participate in the inaugural Lift impact programme, the Open Contracting Partnership (OCP) and social impact firm Reboot. The year-long support programme is designed...
Confidence Falls as Cyber Threats and AI Add to the Challenges of Risk Management
Oct 10, 2019
Dun & Bradstreet has released The 2019 Compliance and Procurement Sentiment report which finds that only 85% of respondents are confident about the effectiveness of risk management within their organisation – 8% lower than in the previous survey. A large majority, 84%, also forecast a decline in...
Navigating the Waste and Recycling Services Market
Oct 3, 2019
Local Authorities (in the UK and elsewhere) will be looking to procure more waste and recycling services in the next few years as tighter regulations come into play. In the UK alone, DEFRA (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) will be setting harder resources and waste strategy...
Governments Buying AI Intelligently – New Guidelines
Oct 2, 2019
The World Economic Forum has issued guidelines to help governments procure artificial intelligence. They have been co-designed by WEF’s artificial intelligence and machine learning team and the UK government’s Office of AI along with Deloitte, Salesforce and Splunk. Government and private...
Key to Understanding the Public Procurement Process and Compete for Projects
Sep 5, 2019
Market intelligence solutions provider SpendEdge has recently published an article for any firm wanting to better understand the public procurement process when competing for work. It highlights six key steps to follow including: requirement identification, scope of the procurement, determining the...
The Problem for Small and Local Suppliers – Barriers to Public Markets
Aug 29, 2019
In a post this week, procurement advisory firm Odesma talked about what they believe to be some of the main challenges in public sector procurement that are preventing them from implementing innovation and efficiencies. One of them is ‘engaging local suppliers.’
“With Brexit a couple of...
EU Public Procurement Policy and the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Pushing and Pulling as One?
Aug 29, 2019
Professor of Economic Law at the University of Bristol Law School and a Member of the European Procurement Law Group, Prof Albert Sanchez-Graells, has written a paper to submit to the Annual EU Law and Policy Conference titled ‘EU Law in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.’ In it he...
Global Lead Cities Network on Sustainable Public Procurement Report
Aug 29, 2019
A Global Lead Cities Network on Sustainable Public Procurement (SPP) report has been released. The initiative was set up to create a worldwide network of leading cities that share and develop their capabilities to implement sustainable and innovation procurement, driving a transition to sustainable...
Public Sector Urged to Invest In Solar Power Now
Aug 29, 2019
Central and local government in the UK has made some significant environmental commitments in the past 12 months. Swindon Borough Council-owned Public Power Solutions says falling costs and rising demand for solar power purchase agreements (PPAs) ‘makes large-scale solar investment a good bet...
More than 7m Separate Cyber Attacks on Small Businesses in 2 Years
Aug 8, 2019
A recent report from the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) explains the results of a survey of 1,135 small businesses in the UK. Findings show that one-fifth said they have been the victim of cyber-attack in the past two years, which the research equates to nearly 10,000 cyber-attacks a day for...
Innovative Open Source Knowledge Graph Sheds Light on Public Sector Procurement Data
Aug 1, 2019
TheyBuyForYou.eu is a three-year initiative with researchers, innovators and public administrations from five European countries. With funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, it aims to deliver tools, alongside enabling technologies and data, to make...
First Open Source Knowledge Graph on European Public Procurement
Jul 19, 2019
The ‘TheyBuyForYou’ project brings together researchers, innovators and public administrations from five European countries who are working on guidelines for procurement data visualisation. An international research team with open data specialists from the University of Southampton have...
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Policies and Regulations
It’s no surprise President Trump has been systematically dismantling President Obama’s executive orders, since taking office. Obama himself knew it was a possibility: Frustrated by …
Past performance is an important step in being successful as a federal government contractor. Once firms get into the mid-tier range, they normally have amassed …
A few months back, we published several articles about the very interesting – and somewhat shocking – court case around the UK’s Nuclear Decommissioning …
Perspectives and Insights
I have been interested in the question of getting successful commercial companies, especially tech companies, to sell to the government from the time I was …
The Contractor Accountability and Transparency Act of 2017 (S. 651), introduced by Sens. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Jon Tester, D-Mont., is yet another example of a …
Think you know all about public sector owned professional buying organisations (PBOs) and what they do? Here are ten interesting facts that might just surprise …