Newswire | Europe

ALERT M|E: On May 25, a small yet impactful “technical correction” to SBA’s regulations took effect. Notably, it could have a profound impact on small businesses with multiple award contracts (MAC), particularly for those involved in M&A.SBA appears to have changed the eligibility of small...

Memorial Day is almost here, which means the unofficial start of summer. I hope everyone enjoys the long weekend while remembering all the men and women who gave their lives in service to our country. In this week’s edition of the SmallGovCon Week in Review, two Topeka men were named in a scheme...

Rotterdam is embedding a Socially Responsible Procurement Action Plan to further responsible procurement. The plan describes how the city will put its agreements into action starting with the effective and efficient use of the purchasing function for social policy objectives, such as employment and...

The UK Ministry of Defence has released a new Joint Concept Note on Human and Machine Teaming which proposes keeping “a register of security-cleared UK nationals” with artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics expertise. The document outlines what the MoD sees as the future of national defence,...

The EU’s new guidance document on innovation procurement “presents in a concise manner the fundamental aspects of innovation procurement: why it is important, who is interested in it and how it can be carried out. It covers: what the innovation procurement concept means, the policy framework...

The Romanian Government has adopted an emergency ordinance (OUG) on public procurement that changes the public acquisition laws to make it simpler for public authorities to assign contracts and harder for them to be challenged. Bidders who challenge the results of a public tender will have to pay a...

USDS debuts new acquisition training program for digital specialists, recent FITARA scorecard shows most federal agencies backslid in their implementation of the IT acquisition law, and GSA wants to make it easier for agencies to acquire cybersecurity services faster. This is Public Spend Forum’s...

In more defence news this week, Forces Network, explains that the UK Ministry of Defence is facing a £2.9bn gap in its programme to maintain and renew the country’s Trident nuclear deterrent. The National Audit Office (NAO) has said that the MoD is set to spend £50.9bn over the next 10 years...

FM Global’s Supply Chain Resilience Index 2018 is out. This is an annual ranking of 130 countries and territories by the resilience of their business environments. It is an online, interactive resource to give global business leaders, private and public, the intelligence with which to plan where...

This week three Government ministers begin a two-day trade and investment mission to Dublin, Limerick and Sligo. They are the Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, the Minister of State for Trade, Employment, Business, EU Digital Single Market and Data Protection, and the Minister of...

Last month the German National IT Planning Council decided to mandate use of the PEPPOL eDelivery Network as the web service for e-invoices to public authorities in Germany. The timeline for implementation by federal, regional and local authorities will be decided in October.  As part of these...

An article we found this week that we think is worthy of your attention is by Omar Salaymeh and appears on Purchasing B2B, in which he claims “… ‘free’ platforms affect process openness and the ability to keep pace with innovation.” In the case of free procurement software, he says, many...