How Data Can Revolutionise Government Procurement

Ensuring transparency in government procurement is not only a matter of ethical governance but also a catalyst for efficiency, fair competition, and economic growth. But how? What exactly does transparency do to ensure these things? Here's a quick overview of how it works, and what governments can ...

The introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has begun to reshape the very core of procurement analytics, as part of an EU project exploring data enrichment, we're learning exactly how AI is catalysing a new age of data enrichment in the procurement sector.

Trade associations work hard to provide opportunities for their members. Government procurement insights are a new tool to empower trade associations to navigate the landscape of global trade more effectively, and provide greater opportunities for their members who work in this space.

One often untapped growth source for export agencies is government procurement data. Integrating this data into your export strategy can provide a powerful blueprint for success, offering valuable insights into market trends, demand patterns, and opportunities for growth.

Whether you're a novice or a seasoned professional, tapping into the valuable resource of government procurement data is a goldmine for exporters, consultancies and government suppliers.

Government procurement data is not just a collection of numbers and statistics; it is a strategic asset that holds the key to unlocking value for both public sector buyers and suppliers. Transforming data into dollars lies in harnessing insights for cost savings, and improved procurement efficiency.

In the face of climate change and growing environmental concerns, the global call to action for achieving net-zero emissions has never been louder. Governments worldwide are setting ambitious targets to combat climate change, aiming to balance greenhouse gas emissions with removals by the mid-21st ...

One of the most potent tools at the disposal of government buyers, is procurement data, which can be used to improve supplier performance, forge stronger partnerships, and elevate overall business success.

Government procurement, represents a significant portion of public spending, in fact, globally, the total government procurement spend sits at $13 trillion (USD). Transparency, efficiency, and equitable allocation of resources are key focus areas for government spending, and the shift to ...

The European Union will soon require thousands of large companies to actively identify and reduce human rights abuses and environmental damage in their supply chains. This new EU regulation will also cover foreign businesses with operations in the region, including American companies.

Transparency and accountability are the cornerstones of effective governance. In the realm of public procurement, these are critical to ensure fair competition, prevent corruption, and optimise resource allocation. In recent years, the integration of data analytics has emerged as a key way for ...

Trade associations play a pivotal role in fostering collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and collective growth among businesses operating within specific industries.

Governments around the world are recognising their role in shaping sustainable economies through their procurement practices. With a global government procurement market valued at $13tn many nations are implementing sustainable public procurement initiatives. We take a look at some here:

While traditional methods of market analysis and trade agreements remain vital to export agencies, the role of data-driven insights from government procurement data is emerging as a powerful tool to shape and enhance export strategies.

Government procurement data can serve as a goldmine of insights for trade associations, enabling them to advocate more effectively on behalf of their members, provide opportunities for members to take advantage of the $13trn (USD) government procurement market, and drive positive change within ...

For many SME’s, doing business with government is not high on their prospecting list. In the media, much of the coverage around government suppliers tends to be about big consultancies and major multinational technology companies. It’s understandable then that many smaller businesses would consider ...

The disruption in traditional procurement continues around the world, with many countries moving towards digitising their government procurement processes. E-procurement platforms are being implemented to streamline the purchasing process, reduce paperwork, and enhance transparency. This ...

Public sector contracting in Europe continues to demonstrate worrying levels of uncompetitive tendering. Across 2022/23 nearly one in three reported contracts were let having received just one bid.

It's well accepted that efficient procurement leads to cost savings, better strategic decision-making and can contribute to overall business growth. But less focus is given to the fact that in order to achieve excellence in procurement, a foundation of good procurement data is essential.

The USA's Small Business Administration plays a key role in setting government contracting goals in any given year. Individual government agency scorecards have been developed to help track against these goals. This week, the US government has reviewed recent performance.

In June 2023, the UK Government opened the first part of its public consultation on the legislation required to implement the new public procurement regime established by the new draft Procurement Bill.

Not all data is the same. It might have come from the same source, but how it gets treated is vital. If a data company doesn't have good data hygiene practices things can get messy very quickly, making it hard to understand the data or undermining your valuable analysis.

In February this year, the UK government launched the new Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) a department created to assist the UK in becoming an innovative economy. The department brought together five 'future' technologies - quantum, AI, engineering biology, semiconductors, ...

Governments spend a lot.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought unprecedented challenges to governments around the world, especially in the procurement of essential supplies and equipment. As the crisis gradually recedes, governments are taking stock of their procurement strategies and reevaluating their approaches to ensure better ...

In a world of data-driven decision-making, businesses are constantly seeking information to drive growth and competitive advantage. One highly beneficial resource is government procurement data. Accessing and analysing this data can provide companies with invaluable insights, enabling them to ...

in December 2020, we shared the UK Government's Green Paper consultation on ‘Transforming Public Procurement’ which outlines proposed measures to be included in the Procurement Bill. The Government’s response to the consultation was published in December 2021 including an analysis of 600 responses ...

Following the recent adjustments made to procurement laws in the UK based on national security, New Zealand's Government Procurement (NZGP) is also taking steps to strengthen its own national security through tighter procurement rules. New guidelines coming into effect on August 14th, aim to ...

The Government Procurement Agreement 2012 (GPA), under the World Trade Organisation (WTO), aims to establish fair, open, and transparent competition in government procurement markets worldwide, which collectively exceeds $13 trillion.

It's been a busy week for government procurement audits globally, including the most recent report from the Australian National Audit Office(ANAO), looking at the Department of Home Affairs (Home Affairs or the department) procurement process for a ‘Global Digital Platform’ (GDP), an IT workflow ...

We've been following the the UK Government's proposed new Procurement Bill as it has made its way through the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Yesterday, the Government announced new amendments tabled, with the objective of strengthening national security. The amendments include the ...

A new National Audit Office (NAO) report highlights that further action is needed by the UK Government to strengthen governance and delivery mechanisms, if it is to secure value for money for its £4.2bn of innovation spending in pursuit of net zero.

The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) has recently released its findings into a review of the Department of Defence (Defence) 2018 procurement of Hunter class frigates. The acquisition of nine frigates was a key part of the Australian Government’s planned expenditure on naval shipbuilding and ...

The UK Government's, Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) Space Systems Programme has announced it is seeking proposals to aid UK Defence and Security in developing future space science and technologies.

The European Commissions Directorate Generate for Informatics (DIGIT), has launched a new dynamic purchasing system for software licences and associated services (SIDE III DPS). This new system is part of the Commission's efforts to modernise IT and procurement and streamline procedures, reduce ...

The UK Government yesterday announced new measures for domestic tree seed production and biosecurity procurement requirements.

Since early on in the pandemic, there has been significant focus on the procurement of Covid related PPE, due to unprecedented nature of the procurement needs, and the processes and results that followed. To assist with transparency, here at Spend Network, we worked with They Buy For You to analyse ...

The European Union Council has adopted an assistance measure worth €1 billion under the European Peace Facility (EPF) that will further contribute to strengthening the capabilities of Ukraine to defend its independence against Russian military aggression.

One of the projects we are most proud of is working with The Open Contracting Partnership to create a Sustainable Public Procurement (SPP) toolkit. The toolkit provides practical insights for the day-to-day needs of procurement professionals on adopting and measuring sustainable procurement.In this ...

Within living memory, the UK’s Crown Commercial Service (CCS) had planned to reshape a large swathe of public procurement in the image of the Digital Marketplace, the website that effectively ran the G-Cloud and Digital Outcomes frameworks. The future, we were assured, was a dynamic marketplace ...

Why we sell data not seats?

A Silicon Valley startup, GLASS, has created a revolutionary new tech, Glass Commerce, an e-commerce marketplace enabling compliant transactions between government buyers and verified vendors, including small businesses, without bids or paperwork.

At Spend Network, we are always on the look out for governments, think tanks, research bodies, and other organisations who are working with public procurement to increase transparency, and improve outcomes of for communities through public spend.

The European Commission and European Parliament’s Committee on International Trade have agreed on an anti-coercion instrument (ACI) which will enable public procurement measures, import tariffs and trade restrictions to be placed against third countries who apply economic pressure or bidding ...

The UK Ministry of Defence has awarded a £256 million contract, for work, repairs, servicing, and facilities management for the UK defence site in Cyprus

Endorsements are a win-win for export agencies.

If you are looking to grow exports, you should start with the largest and most transparent industry in the world, and here are five reasons why:

US defence giant Lockheed Martin has won a contract to deliver Australia’s first sovereign-controlled military satellite communication constellation.

Beneficial ownership refers to the real person(s) who ultimately owns or controls a company or other legal entity. This information is often hidden behind complex ownership structures, which can make it difficult to track the flow of money and identify potential corruption or other financial crime. ...

There is no shortage of procurement data out there, but it doesn’t always have reliable or consistent features. Data that's raw, unreliable, inconsistent, and scattered across different systems is hard to work with and makes it difficult to create a robust business pipeline.

In today's global economy, export-oriented businesses face increasing competition and challenges in identifying the right markets and opportunities for their products and services. One source of information that can help businesses overcome these challenges is government procurement data.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese joined the US President Joe Biden, and the UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, in San Diego this week to announce the signing of a trilateral security pact under which the latter two countries will assist Australia in acquiring and building nuclear-powered ...

Many governments around the world have faced pressure regarding their procurement of COVID-19 treatments and vaccines, so it is encouraging to see The Australian Government releasing its response to the Halton review into procurement of Covid 19 vaccine and treatment.

EU ministers will meet today in Stockholm to decide whether to jointly procure ammunition to aid Ukraine and replenish domestic stockpiles. EU defence ministers will informally discuss plans to speed up the supply of ammunition to Ukraine, which is seeking more ammunition to fight Russia’s ...

Clarkesworld Magazine is a publisher of science fiction short stories. They accept and pay for submissions from anyone. As of last week, they closed submissions due to an overwhelming influx of spam submissions that appear to have been generated by AI algorithms.

This week, the Canadian Government announced a major step in the procurement process for their High Frequency Rail project: the launch of the Request for Qualifications (RFQ).

Deduplication is a deceptively complex problem to handle at scale. There’s a simple, ugly and brutal way to do it, where you compare two records and determine if they are exactly the same, but this doesn’t work if the records are very slightly different. A missing comma is enough to render that ...

Data is critical to the functioning of government. Policies and services live or die on the quality of data. Successes and failures can often be shaped by the decisions teams make at the outset of a project, especially regarding data.

I asked Chat-GPT to find me some academic papers that highlight the usefulness of combining two different machine learning techniques. I hoped that it might be able to point me to some new insights for some research we’re doing into document clustering. The results were surprising:

Over the years, government procurement has undergone significant changes, with new trends emerging that are reshaping the way governments buy goods and services.

If you are building your own export platform, sourcing, organising and analysing your data has its challenges. Here are some of the most common challenges we see:

On 26 March 2020, the UK became the first country to publish a Government Modern Slavery Statement, setting out the steps government was taking to identify and prevent modern slavery in its own supply chains[footnote].

Are you an exporter looking for leads for your exporters?

Government procurement, the process by which government entities purchase goods, services and works from private businesses, is being revolutionised by the integration of data technology. The increase in data analytics and digital platforms is making government procurement around the world ...

Blockchain is fundamentally a database, but rather than a database where one item is allowed to replace another, each change to the data is added as new record that is then chained to other records using a complex algorithm.

The need for administrations to act at pace is often at odds with the processes and procedures needed for good procurement.

Government procurement data can be a valuable resource for export agencies looking to expand their business and identify new opportunities in foreign markets. By understanding the types of goods and services that various government agencies are purchasing, export agencies can gain insight into the ...

In a world where text can be generated by an algorithm for negligible costs, we have to rethink how we value the written word. In procurement, the effort required to create written texts has become a proxy for validity. That is changing, in a world where Chat-GTP is the dunce in the room, ie. 2025, ...

Canberra, in the Australian Capital Territory, is home to the nations houses of parliament and a large swathe of public sector. Transparency of public procurement has become an issue in the state in recent years. In fact, last March the ACT public sector Integrity Commissioner Michael Adams, told a ...

The proposed new Procurement Bill passed its second reading without division in the House of Commons yesterday, with the Government proposing the new bill will make it easier for small businesses to win more of the £300billion of goods, services and works that the government buys each year.

Government procurement data, the information on what goods and services government entities purchase in different markets, is an extremely valuable, and often underused tool for the export industry. Government data can help identify and open new markets, and help businesses compete more ...

The government has published a document, providing further information about the procurement of critical testing equipment and services during the early months of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in 2020.The document outlines the challenges of the situation for procurement:

Analysing 7.5 million tender documents published by governments around the world has revealed a worrying trend of publishers providing less data for potential bidders. On average, the number of tender notices that have descriptions with fewer than 250 characters has increased from 31% in 2019 to ...

All data has a provenance.

We collect tens of thousands of documents every day.

There are a number of ways that government procurement data can help export agencies, including:

The proposed changes to the Procurement Bill are on their third reading in the House of Lords.

It’s time to shed a festive tear and feel some sympathy for all the bidding teams who’ve got bids to respond to during the Christmas break. So put on a Christmas jumper and let’s have a run down of the buyers who insist on setting tender deadlines during the Christmas break.

If you’re in the business of exporting, you know that the global market can be a tough one to crack. In order to be successful, you need to be strategic about where you allocate your resources. Fortunately, there is a way to get insights into where governments are spending their money so you can ...

Last week, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled that public access to registries showing personal details about companies' beneficial owners infringes fundamental individual rights otherwise protected by the EU. The Court said the EU's 2018 requirement for Member States to grant ...

The European Commission has recently presented an assessment under the procedure to Hungary that we covered recently here. The Commission found that, notwithstanding steps taken, there is still a continued risk to the EU budget given, that remedial measures still need to be fulfilled.

If you're lucky, poor data will only make you look inefficient, but if you're unlucky, it will make a real mess of your business.

There are some good reasons for including procurement data in your alternative data strategy.

Not all data is the same. It might have come from the same source, but how it gets treated is vital. If a data company doesn't have good data hygiene practices things can get messy very quickly, making it hard to understand the data or undermining your valuable analysis.

Crown Commercial Services together with HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), have released a contract notice for the Digital and Legacy Application Services (DALAS) framework, with a purported value of up to £4.2 billion over four years.

The Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) agency has begun negotiating the final terms of delivery with Lockheed on an order from the The Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) for 88 new fighters, as part of a phase out its current fleet under its Future Fighter Capability Project.

If your company is hiring data analysts, you need data.

We've been talking for a while about AI and possible impacts on procurement. We use AI in our own service to almost effortlessly categorise hundreds of millions of documents in dozens of languages. We can complete a task in around 6 hours that would take a team of six humans more than four years to ...

The National Audit office is working on a Lessons Learned report, highlighting opportunities for change in public procurement.

As the world emerges from the pandemic, governments are reviewing their procurement of Covid related goods and services. The Australian Government tasked Professor Jane Halton, AO (Order of Australia) to lead an independent review into Australia’s COVID-19 vaccine and treatment procurements.

Last week, Hungary's government passed the first two of 17 anti-corruption legislation bills, in a bid to avoid losing €7.5bn in financing from the EU.

The UK Government has this week signed major major defence equipment agreements with Poland’s military capability.

Several European and international organisations, covering large corporations, SMEs, research centres and universities, are joining forces to develop new methods and tools for effective and efficient management of data enrichment processes in the recently started project enRichMyData: Enabling Data ...

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) is running a Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) Contract Readiness Fund grant competition, inviting bids to co-design and deliver a programme that will enable the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) sectors ...

About a year ago, we wrote an article on the new procurement instrument approved by the European Union. In recent weeks this long awaited change has become law.

Back in June we wrote about blacklisting of suppliers and the Government’s intention to prevent poorly performing suppliers from bidding for government contracts. We mentioned the subject of Bain and Company and made it clear that Ministers would need to be ready to defend their decisions when ...

The UK has been placed ‘under review’ by the 77-country-strong Open Government Partnership (OGP) due to its failure to meet mandatory criteria for the two previous National Action Plans. These plans set out how the government will progress transparency and accountability initiatives.

An investigation by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) into investments by Thurrock Borough Council has led to the resignation of the Council Leader and the Government has now stepped in and Essex County Council will run their finance team.

It’s always encouraging when we see governments around the world looking to improve their procurement transparency and efficiency. The New Zealand Government has recently released a Cabinet report, outlining plans to reform the government procurement system. The New Zealand Government currently ...

It is estimated that around 40-50% of natural resources are transformed into construction material, and that as much as 30% of all building materials delivered to a construction site end up in waste. To minimise this, it is important to ensure that the procurement process allows for careful and ...

When procuring construction projects, it can be useful to underpin sustainability criteria on existing policy and regulation. When assessing the enabling framework, it can be useful to identify, or consider establishing, the following compliance sources:

A small Cornish company has purportedly won a £70bn contract to help deliver the country's transition to Net Zero. The Penzance based company called The Place Group has won a framework contract to "control, manage and deliver" the public sector transition to Everything Net Zero, run by The East of ...

One of the key challenges of sustainably procuring ICT lies in the lack of transparency in supply chains. To overcome this challenge, an open dialogue has to be established with suppliers, forging a relationship to encourage and promote sharing and monitoring of supply-chain activities.

The extraction of raw materials, manufacturing, transportation, use, and disposal of ICT products is associated with a number of environmental, social, and economic externalities.

A while ago, we shared an article on findings by the Boston Consulting Group and the World Economic Forum that showed procurement is responsible for 15% of all greenhouse gas emissions, globally. Their study reported that governments spend $11trillion(USD) annually-or 15% of global GDP, on ...

Construction projects are usually long and complex, involving the participation of different stakeholders throughout the different project stages. There are certain factors that are key to determine the sustainability of a project, and the monitoring of these factors necessarily entails the ...

The construction industry is estimated to account for 6% of global GDP, with Africa's construction market valued at around USD 5.4 billion in 2020 and LAC’s at USD 829.3 billion in 2018. This translates into more than 100 million jobs worldwide. However, this sector also accounted for the largest ...

With the implementation of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Biden-Harris Administration set an objective to ensure federal investments built wealth and opportunity for underserved entrepreneurs and small business owners.

In this article from the Sustainable Public Procurement Toolkit, we explain how you can use data to measure and monitor progress against the goal of promoting life cycle costing approaches in procurement. What is it? Life-cycle costing or total cost of ownership refers to the accounting practice of ...

What Is Gender Inclusion Measurement? To reduce the barriers women-led businesses face in public procurement markets, we need to be able to identify women-led businesses and understand to what extent they are bidding on and winning government contracts. This includes an understanding of both the ...

What Is Carbon Reduction in Procurement About? Governments and companies are setting deadlines for achieving zero emissions. Public procurement can be used as a lever to drive change by promoting lower carbon alternatives into government supply chains.

There are different ways in which open data can be used to drive and measure progress against sustainability goals.

We believe all public procurement should be sustainable and open. Recently, with our partners Open Contracting and Public, we launched a new toolkit, to assist businesses with open data that drives sustainable public procurement implementation and measures sustainability outcomes.

In the UK’s House of Lords debate on procurement reform, there was some forthright questioning within the government on whether Bain and Company, who had been found to have acted illegally in South Africa, should still be engaged by the UK Government. The exchange raises the question of how the ...

Last week in a Lords Chamber debate, Lord Peter Hain asked why Bain & Company were still able to bid for multi-million-pound UK contracts “when the company has recently been found by a South African judicial inquiry to be guilty of unlawful complicity in corruption under former President Zuma?”

Governments spend over 13tn USD a year with their suppliers, or around 15% of global GDP. We’ve started analysing the carbon intensity of public procurement. It is uncertain how much of our carbon is emitted through public procurement, but with a strong emphasis on infrastructure, transport, and ...

Much of the last two years have seen governments globally in a purchasing panic due to the pandemic. Understandably there has been an increase in direct award contracts, in response to the health emergency.

There’s a truth to Tom Peter’s famous quote “what gets measured, gets done”. Peters was a writer and thinker on management practice who advocated the use of quality measures, today we refer to these quality measures as “Key Performance Indicators” or KPIs.

The National Capital Authority (NCA) was established in 1989 under the Australian Capital Territory (Planning and Land Management) Act 1988 (PALM Act) following the introduction of self-government to the Australian Capital Territory.

A group of Indo-Pacific nations has banded together to begin the process of developing an Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity. This framework is intended to advance resilience, sustainability, inclusiveness, economic growth, fairness, and competitiveness amongst participating nations.

The UK government faces trial in the High Court over its award of an £854 million contract for a new Meteorological Office IT system, according to the Financial Times.

The UK’s latest procurement bill promises much, but many of the technical details remain to be defined. The drafting of the procurement bill matches many of the trailed promises featured in the consultation, but some of those promises, notably those around transparency remain undefined.

We’ve written before about frameworks, but some improved analysis from our brilliant data team made us think it was time to revisit the issue.

The Centre for Built Britain has released a white paper on Procurement Strategies for incentivising collaborative delivery, which explores how a collaborative approach to procurement can help to deliver projects better, faster, greener, and safer with a focus on net-zero targets and building safety.

Britain's Ministry of Defence announced this week that over £2 billion worth of defence contracts have been awarded to start the third phase of its submarine nuclear deterrent programme termed 'Dreadnought'.

One of the projects we are most proud of is working with The Open Contracting Partnership to create a Sustainable Public Procurement (SPP) toolkit. The toolkit provides practical insights for the day-to-day needs of procurement professionals on adopting and measuring sustainable procurement.In this ...

The Government of Canada recently released its 2022 Federal Budget. Within it was an announcement of an intention to establish a Trade Remedy Counselling unit (TRC) to improve access to Canada’s trade remedy system for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Last year, we shared the results of the landmark Aboriginal Procurement policy (APP), first introduced by Western Australia’s Premier, Mark MacGowan in 2018. The objective of the policy was to improve outcomes for Aboriginal businesses in the state, with targeted measures to increase contract ...

Just a few months ago, we shared an article on findings by the Boston Consulting Group and the World Economic Forum that showed procurement is responsible for 15% of all greenhouse gas emissions, globally. Their study reported that governments spend $11trillion(USD) annually-or 15% of global GDP, ...

COVID-19 showed that women have been disproportionately affected by the economic and social fallout from the pandemic(OECD, 2020[1]), as the pandemic exacerbated existing structural inequalities and gender norms (United Nations, 2020[2]).

We’ve been working closely with The Cabinet Office to develop and refine a robust and repeatable methodology for the identification and matching of tenders, as part of the Open Government National Action Plan.

Understanding a market or a phenomenon has to account for when something happened.

Consultancies have won contracts worth more than £700m from UK government in Covid related contracts since the start of the pandemic in 2020. Concerningly, many of the contracts were awarded without competitive tender.

In our last post, I suggested that public procurement has a big problem: an inability to account for, or record failure. Today I’m going to suggest a possible solution. One that would provide the sort of insight that we can use to understand contract failures in procurement.

The world has changed.

Last week, the UK Government released a Procurement Policy Note (PPN) that sets out how contracting authorities can further cut ties with companies backed by the states of Russia and Belarus.

The Defence Committee, made up of a number of MP’s appointed by the House of Commons to examine the expenditure, administration, and policy of the Ministry of Defence and its associated public bodies, has announced the first of two inquiries into aviation procurement

Search is difficult.

The European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) has released a paper that examines procurement practices across the EU in their delivery of high-quality medicines for patients.

Right into the heart of your business.

A few months ago we wrote about the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) investigation into the procurement practices of government-funded infrastructure.

Developers are a precious resource. You want them deployed on the most critical projects and for their time to be best used.

You can’t run a good service on bad data.

Crown Hosting Data Centres (CHDC) is likely to ‘win’ the government hosting framework contract worth up to £250 million.

With national, federal, and regional tender portals, it is easy to get an idea of the public procurement marketplace. But in truth, these are only scratching the surface of a $13 trillion dollar marketplace. There are almost 100k public entities in the US alone. Even a smaller country like the ...

Our users enjoy access to all the key, live tender opportunities from around the world.

When opening up most banking apps, it’s amazing how vague the transactional information is.

There is a lot of procurement data out there, but it doesn’t always have reliable or consistent features. Data that's raw, unreliable, inconsistent, and scattered across different systems is hard to work with and makes it difficult to create a robust business pipeline.

A recent report by the global business strategists Boston Consulting Group and the World Economic Forum has found global government procurement is responsible for 15% of all greenhouse gas emissions. Their study reported that governments spend $11trillion(USD) annually-or 15% of global GDP, on ...

One of the first things President Biden did when he came into office was launch an executive order on green procurement.

In November 2021, the Australian state Government of Victoria launched a digital strategy, which identified the frailties of the existing process for ICT procurement and offered strategies to simplify the process with the objective of encouraging a broader range of companies to do business with the ...

In December 2020, the UK Government Cabinet Office set out proposals for shaping the future of public procurement legislation with the publication of a Green Paper, Transforming Public Procurement.Preview (opens in a new tab)

-By Alex Yeung

Earlier this year we shared the New Zealand Government's decision to improve its health procurement through a review process of Pharmac, the Crown entity that chooses medicines and pharmaceutical products for community and public hospitals.

Machine learning is seeping into our everyday lives, it powers our social feeds, our song recommendations, and our internet searches. It’s coming for your chatbots and the car you drive. Its potential to pervade business is obvious.

While on his campaign trail, Joe Biden guaranteed to use the federal government’s $500 billion-per-year buying power to “drive towards 100 percent tidy power as well as zero-emissions cars.”

We like a challenge.

This week a respected Professor took to Twitter to criticise the government’s purchasing arrangements.

With £244 million in UK Government contracts won in the 12 months to March 2021, KPMG will no doubt be feeling the heat after receiving a letter from the Cabinet Office seeking assurances that there would be no further missteps after recent misconduct allegations.

It is that time of year again, where our halls are decked with holly, presents are under the tree, plans for a well earned break are definitely afoot. Yet despite this seasonal joy, a group of buyers have inexplicably decided to ruin Christmas for some of their suppliers by publishing tenders that ...

The news that UK government will implement a new supplier blacklist, banning errant companies from winning contracts has raised the question of how to operate a bidding blacklist in public contracting.

Not because we're shifty. We're not.

Are you ready for artificial intelligence fraud?

Machine learning is changing the world.

The autumn budget included an announcement that HM Revenue and Customs will receive approximately £750m over the next three years to upgrade its technology infrastructure.

In early September, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis outlined major defence procurement plans as a way to overhaul its loss-making Greek defence industry and boost the country’s defence capabilities.

The UK Government has come under renewed pressure after being ordered to reveal the names of companies that were directly awarded significant contracts for the supply of PPE in a recent ruling from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

When selling to governments, SME's often have challenges with matching the buying power and supply chain strength of larger organisations. For the South Korean Central Government, the pandemic has proved an opportunity to support small and medium-sized enterprises, by focusing on opportunities in ...

Our list of tender sources in the UK extends to over 180 individual publishers. If you use Spend Network you can access all of that data through one API call.

Canadian not-for-profit organisation Futurpreneur, has partnered with the Canadian Aboriginal and Minority Supplier Council (CAMSC), on a project to diversify the Canadian Government supply chain. Futurpeneur is a not-for-profit organisation, providing financial and mentoring assistance to young ...

Not all data is the same. It might have come from the same source, but how it gets treated is vital. If a data company doesn't have good data hygiene practices things can get messy very quickly, making it hard to understand the data or undermining your valuable analysis.

Our customers are the special ones.

We've launched a new analysis; the carbon emitted by the public sector's supply chain (scope three emissions).

The WTO have announced a new agreement on the regulation of the services sector in over sixty countries. The deal ensures more transparency on regulation and certification of services companies.

A few weeks back, when the US, UK and Australian governments announced their surprise military pact, France wore the brunt of the new alliance, with the Australian Government subsequently scrapping its €50 billion nuclear submarine deal with them.

The UK Government has released plans for the investment of £650 billion of public and private cash into infrastructure projects across the country over the next decade under its new National Infrastructure and Construction Pipeline. The investment will support more than 400k jobs between 2021 and ...

We’ve built an analysis of carbon emissions by contract.

We only charge for commercial use of our data. Non commercial users get it for free.

Across Europe, the number of single bid tenders that only receive one bid continues to grow. Despite the pandemic, the number of contracts awarded after just one bid has been received is staying stubbornly high at 20%.

This week, the Australian Government House of Representative standing committee has been presiding over a an inquiry into government procurement practices.

Spend Network exists because I almost lost everything.

The UK’s export credit agency UK Export Finance (UKEF), has signed a partnership with Banco Centroamericano de Integración Económica (BCIE), Central America’s leading development bank, to encourage the joint financing of major projects. With a mandate to predominantly focus on supporting major ...

We recently discussed new procurement changes in Australia with the Western Australian government procurement process, which includes specific policies to increase opportunities for Aboriginal businesses. The Government of Canada has recently announced similar changes to provide increased economic ...

The EU countries have agreed to pass the International Procurement Instrument (IPI), one that was initially proposed by the European Commission back in 2012.

One of the first acts of the Biden administration was to direct public buyers to buy from American firms. China is apparently doing the same and the EU is seeking to add tariffs to those who make it harder for EU countries to trade with them.

Slovenia is slated to join Ukraine as the only public administrations that will routinely monitor contract overspend on all public contracts. What's more, they're doing it in the open. Legislation is currently being passed to mandate the publication of contract identifiers for every item of ...

When selling to governments, SMEs often have challenges with matching the buying power and supply chain strength of larger organisations. For the South Korean Central Government, the pandemic has proved an opportunity to support small and medium-sized enterprises, by focusing on opportunities in ...

New rules to help reduce CO2 in public contracting show that at least 720 suppliers will be required to provide a detailed carbon reduction plan if they are to continue to win government contracts.

The UK's Trade and Agriculture Commission has published its final report, along with twenty-two recommendations, one of which is to direct the UK Government to buy food sourced in the UK.

In 2018, Western Australian Labour Premier Mark McGowan introduced a landmark Aboriginal Procurement policy. The objective of the policy was to improve outcomes for Aboriginal businesses in the state with targeted measures to increase contract awards.

Trade promotion, where a country promotes its companies and products to be bought by another, has a certain image. One imagines suave Alan Whicker clones sipping wine and doing deals at expensive hotels.

Our clients expect us to answer tough questions. Questions like, "what's the total value of public contracting worldwide?" or, "who's the leading buyer of consulting services in Europe?" Being able to answer those questions requires a thorough understanding of public procurement, but also an ...

The US Government's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has requested submissions on the "methods and leading practices" to assess whether agencies' policies and actions are meeting the needs of underserved communities and cites procurement as part of their work.

As experts in procurement and open data, we are pleased to see the recent announcement that global confectionery giant Mars is harnessing its procurement power to tackle climate change.

We're always pleased to see governments reviewing their procurement processes with a view to greater transparency. The Western Australian Government has recently released a new framework, supporting their Procurement Act 2020, bringing together goods, services, and works procurement under one piece ...

....So says the Cabinet Office, with new measures released on World Environment Day that will require businesses to publish clear and credible carbon reduction plans before they can bid for major government contracts.

The New Zealand Government is taking steps to improve its procurement of national medicine supply through a review process. The Pharmaceutical Management Agency, better known as Pharmac, is a New Zealand Crown entity that decides which medicines and pharmaceutical products are subsidised for use in ...

This week sees Highland Council publish the main construction and refurbishment tenders for the Inverness Castle Transformation project, through Public Contracts Scotland (PCS). The tenders are part of the master plan for Inverness Castle to become a tourism gateway, as the centerpiece to the ...