Consultancy Risks Government Contract Ban.
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.
KPMG risks being banned from bidding on government contracts altogether, should more concerning ...
The Buyers That Stole Christmas (Reprise)
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 need to be completed ...
8 things you need to run a supplier blacklist
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.
Below we outline the 8 essentials things that a government needs to have in place to make a blacklist work.
A process that everyone can sign up ...
We Don’t Want Your Trust.
Not because we're shifty. We're not.
You don't have to trust us. Specifically, you don't have to trust our data.
If you have to trust us, that means you’re hitting and hoping. We get that you can’t know everything, but you will always know exactly what you’re getting from us.
So you don't need to trust us, you can ...
Intelligent Procurement Fraud Is Coming.
Are you ready for artificial intelligence fraud?
We've already written about the almost magical capabilities of artificial intelligence here.
We're using it to augment millions of documents. We're using it every day, creating cleansed, enhanced data that would take humans hundreds of years to process manually.
The latest natural language processing algorithms are completely changing our relationship with text. ...
New Government IT Procurement Opportunities For Smaller Businesses.
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.
These funds include £468m in system improvements to defend against cyberattacks and modernise the tax system. Interestingly, £277m has been allocated to transform the way IT systems are procured. The spending review ...
Greek Defence Spends Billions On Cyber, Navy and Aerospace.
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.
These procurement plans include a bid for new fighter aircraft, warships, and advanced weapons over the next 5 years. The French Government bid was successful in bidding for ...
Pressures Mounts On UK Procurement Processes
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).
The Good Law Project (GLP), was the first to reveal what they term 'VIP' access, and they are challenging the DHSC over contracts awarded ...
South Korea Targets SME Growth Through Health Procurement
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 the health sector through the provision of pandemic-related health supplies to international markets.
Face ...
List Of UK Tender Sources.
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.
We maintain a comprehensive list of tender websites for public tenders so that we can gather all of the available documents as they are published. We're constantly ...
Canada Levels Up Procurement For Young Entrepreneurs.
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 entrepreneurs. CAMSC is a not-for-profit organisation that certifies and prepares Aboriginal and minority-owned businesses to commercially engage and respond ...
Do You Have Data Integrity?
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.
These are our rules for ensuring data integrity:
...
Delivery Guaranteed.
Our customers are the special ones.
We make the bricks, they build the houses.
They're the ones that make it easy to win contracts.
They're the ones empowering SME businesses.
They're the ones fighting for international trade.
They're the ones creating new credit analysis from our data;
or finding an investment alpha amongst the morass of data.
What we do really well is ...
Contracting Emissions
We've launched a new analysis; the carbon emitted by the public sector's supply chain (scope three emissions).
We're calling it Contracting Emissions.
You can see our alpha dashboard here: https://spendnetwork.com/carbon/
The work still has a long way to go, but we're hoping that it can make an impact in public contracting. We'd welcome feedback and thoughts to ian@spendnetwork.com
The Services Sector Opens Up
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.
This creates a significant opportunity for international trade on services, particularly in the public sector, where there is a much greater emphasis on services over goods.
Financial services ...