Blogs & News

A recent Science Magazine article discusses the radical shift in COVID-19 testing needed to reopen schools and businesses. While the country increased testing throughout the summer, we have not be able to mitigate spread effectively. “Diagnostics experts, public health officials, and...

It may become tempting for protocol and attentiveness to detail to take a backseat in the face of crises; however, this puts government agencies at more of a risk from procedural error and fraudulent infiltration. To combat this, the Department of Defense released a report on best practices and...

As the country continues to fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, testing remains one of the keys to mitigating the virus and reopening the economy.  The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been rapidly reviewing and approving Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAs) in order to ensure adequate...

Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched a new search website powered by machine learning that can help researchers quickly and easily search tens of thousands of research papers and documents using natural language questions. The Allen Institute for AI (AI2) released the CORD-19 dataset (COVID-19 Open...

Public Spend Forum is directly supporting government professionals and healthcare workers to address critical shortages for ventilators, respirators, personal protective equipment (PPE) and more, by providing free data on suppliers and inventory on GovShop. Reporter Melissa Mollet from NBC...

A local UK news outlet, ECHO, has reported that its investigation revealed huge hikes in the price of PPE across councils costing them millions as they scrambled for equipment to protect people from coronavirus. Suppliers raised prices well above pre-pandemic levels, it said, adding to council’s...

A new paper from the Federation of Small Businesses for Wales called “A Fresh Start for Public Procurement” has made a number of recommendations for a proactive SME procurement policy. Business News Wales reports: “SMEs make a huge difference to our Welsh economy, and so does making the...

The UK government has launched a new online service to make it easier for British businesses to trade globally. Barriers encountered include unnecessary, legal, regulatory or administrative requirements which includes labelling restrictions, out-of-date regulations and licensing requirements. This...

Currently, 90% of London’s public sector IT contracts are held by just 15 suppliers. A new technology procurement platform will help all 33 local councils in London diversify their IT supplier portfolios. Technology providers now have access to a platform which puts all IT contracts across...

Tomorrow September 11, just before midnight, is the final deadline for you to register to participate in the ‘Get Ready- AI4Cities Bootcamp’ to take place on September 23 and 24. AI4Cities (with Industryhack and participating countries) is running a coaching bootcamp for startups, SMEs and...

A recent Science Magazine article discusses the radical shift in COVID-19 testing needed to reopen schools and businesses. While the country increased testing throughout the summer, we have not be able to mitigate spread effectively. “Diagnostics experts, public health officials, and...

‘Public’ is an organisation that helps start-ups to transform the public sector in any area, from healthcare, to transport, to cyber security. It brings together experience from the public sector, technology and finance to help start-ups solve public problems. Public has just launched GovStart,...

The rapid construction of seven covid-19 specialist ‘Nightingale’ hospitals in the UK, including at the National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham built in just two weeks, has lessons about how a crisis-triggered event and the mindset behind the construction should apply to all projects, in good...

PRONTO is a 40-month EU-funded project under the Competitiveness of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (COSME) programme which officially launched in January 2020 to help inspire, inform and support public buyers in designing, implementing and monitoring PPI procedures, namely purchase...

The Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply (CIPS) and ITN Productions are co-creating a unique news-style content series ‘Supply, Support and Sustain,’ exploring the challenges, opportunities and innovations taking place in the changing landscape of the global procurement and supply...