SmallGovCon Week in Review: October 15-19, 2018
Oct 20, 2018
I had a great time last week at the National HUBZone Conference in Chantilly, Virginia. If you were there, please reach out to say hi!
In this week’s edition of SmallGovCon Week In Review, we’ll look at GSA’s new eBuy pilot program, insight into the SBA OIG’s 8(a) eligibility findings,...
Public Spend Forum’s Public Procurement Weekly Roundup
Oct 19, 2018
Microsoft is the latest major tech company to come under the scrutiny of its own employees for using innovation to support controversial missions of the government, and the USDS believes using tools like Slack, Skype, Google Suite and others could free up time for federal workers to focus more on...
Police Force to Pool Procurement Resources in Collaboration Programme
Oct 19, 2018
The English southeast county of Essex is planning to pool procurement resources between six other police forces in a bid to reduce costs and gain better spending power. The 7 Force Collaboration Programme is made up of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Kent,...
Government Voluntary Code of Conduct for Tech Partnerships with the Public Sector
Oct 19, 2018
Simplifying regulation, reducing the fragmented nature of public sector purchasing and allowing for more flexibility in NHS payment systems to allow for the introduction of new technology are all essential for better adoption of new technology, writes Lexology. The UK Government has published a...
Local Council Provides Free Training on Winning Public Contracts
Oct 19, 2018
Local council Cheshire East is holding free procurement training workshops to help business people with public sector contracts. The procurement training sessions are for local businesses and are designed to support small to medium-sized enterprises and create an opportunity to secure a portion of...
Vietnam To Open Public Procurement Market
Oct 19, 2018
Viet Nam will open up its public procurement market after the Viet Nam-EU free trade agreement (EVFTA) comes into effect, writes Vietnam.net. The opening of the market will also provide opportunities for Vietnamese contractors to reach the EU’s large public procurement market. The agreement is...
Insourcing or Outsourcing – no place for political ideology
Oct 19, 2018
In the latest edition of The Catalyst, Ken Cole, FCIPS, looks at the insource/outsource debate. In the light of the Carillion failure, some public bodies have started the process of in-sourcing, even if the contracts are not necessarily failing, but because of political ideology, he says. And he...
Public Spend Forum’s Public Procurement Weekly Roundup
Oct 12, 2018
Google drops plans to compete for JEDI while IBM recently submitted a bid protest over the $10 billion cloud contract and HHS experiments with blockchain to transform acquisition. All this and more in Public Spend Forum’s Weekly Roundup for October 12, 2018.
IBM Protesting Pentagon’s JEDI...
UK Department for Work and Pensions Is ‘Overall Winner’ of CIPS Supply Management Awards
Oct 12, 2018
On October 10 the UK’s Department for Work and Pensions claimed the 2018 CIPS Supply Management Awards Europe ultimate accolade, taking the star prize of overall winner. Networked source-to-pay solutions, e-invoicing and innovative financing services global provider Basware was celebrating its...
Another Public-Sector Procurement Fiasco Emerges
Oct 11, 2018
The UK Government announced in 2015 it was replacing its emergency services communications network to provide an improved service across England, Scotland and Wales. It was supposed to generate savings or more than £200million a year by being more efficient and effective. But a significant delay...
From Transactions to Changemaking – Rethinking Partnerships Between the Public and Private Sectors
Oct 11, 2018
New Local Government Network (NLGN) is an independent think tank that seeks to transform UK public services. It has published a report on the government’s inability to capture detailed information on procurement with the private sector and why that is problematic. Without better data, government...
CCS More Than Doubles Planned Spending on eSourcing Platform
Oct 11, 2018
UK Government buying organisation, Crown Commercial Service, is replacing its eSourcing platform in a framework it initially drew up worth £4 million to the winning bidder. Now that the contract notice has been issued, CCS expects the cumulative value of the deal across its four lots to be worth...
Perspectives and Insights
We have some other written articles around the issues of lots and lotting (splitting up their contract requirements into smaller contracts), and …
One major trend over the past twenty years in public procurement has been the greater centralization of procurement activity. Conceptually and practically, collaborative procurement is …
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 …
Policies and Regulations
A few months back, we published several articles about the very interesting – and somewhat shocking – court case around the UK’s Nuclear Decommissioning …
The Procurement of Innovation Platform aims to make public procurement of innovation a widespread reality in Europe. The Platform has been developed to help public …
Why Evaluation in Public Procurement is Important If the phrase “bid evaluation” makes you cringe, don’t worry: you’re not alone. If …