United States News

Tech providers are reporting recent growth for digital procurement services at state and local levels. e-bidding procurement platform for state and local governments DemandStar, for example, recently said it had gained 200 new clients in the first half of this year, which already equals the number...

Open innovation, which focuses on posing a question or a problem and inviting companies to solve it, is a growing trend, mainly embraced so far by large companies but increasingly by smaller ones too. But progress of its use has been slow by the public sector, especially by the military or the...

A new report has found that spending on cyber-security among the world’s small and mid-sized enterprises will grow by more than €25 billion ($30bn) in the next four years. The worldwide figure by 2025 will stand at €76 billion ($90bn), with managed security services making up one-third of...

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is discussing potential solutions with retailers, logistics groups and wholesalers as the shortage of lorry drivers has led industry chiefs to warn of an effect on deliveries to supermarkets this summer. The loss of up to 100,000 lorry...

UKCloud, a multi-cloud provider to the UK public sector, is helping to make transformation happen across the  public sector and has released a report ‘Measuring what matters,’ which has been independently published by Social Value Business. New measures to deliver value to society through UK...

The European Parliament is seeking to ensure all 11 Horizon Europe research partnerships are more open and less bureaucratic than their predecessors. Setting down the markers, MEPs have agreed a joint position on the first partnership of the bunch, the EuroHPC €8 billion high-performance...

Under new requirements issued by the Cabinet Office, firms seeking public sector contracts worth more than £5m a year, from September 2021, will also have to publish “clear and credible carbon reduction plans” before being considered, reports Sky News. Businesses bidding for major government...

The UN Environmental Programme is partnering with Arizona State University researchers and other experts to develop the 2021 Global Review of Sustainable Public Procurement, following the 2013 and 2017 editions. The stakeholder survey is to help better understand the state of sustainable...

Among the announcements in the UK’s 2021 Queen’s Speech is that a new Procurement Bill is to be introduced in the next session of the UK Parliament. That bill builds upon the consultation in the Green Paper on procurement reform which closed in March 2021. The UK government’s aim is to...

The World Health Organization report provides information on the WHO’s procurement activities in 2020. It covers procurement of goods and services, and also includes Covid-19-related procurements. The report provides procurement statistics — it says “over the past years, WHO has purchased on...

A 2021 survey by the UK Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) found just 12% of businesses reviewed cyber risks from immediate suppliers, while just one in 20 (5%) did so for wider supply chains, down on 9% in 2020. The UK government is considering setting minimum cyber security...

When ICT accessibility is not considered by public sector entities in the procurement phase, it reduces the employment possibilities for persons with disabilities. Every day in Europe, over 100 million persons with disabilities face barriers in accessing technologies owned by their public...