Archive

‘Unboxing’ £120 Million Of Public Spend

It may have been branded twice, but it seems nothing could save The Festival of Brexit, AKA Unboxed, from tanking in the public engagement stakes. With a target of 66 million punters, the series of events across 107 locations purportedly attracted a mere 240k attendees, although these figures were refuted by the festivals executive director  today, ...

Saab Voices Opposition To Canadian Gov Procurement

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. However, Swedish jet maker Saab, who have also bid ...

Your Data, Your Rules

If your company is hiring data analysts, you need data. You don’t need a login to a website which restricts the queries that your analysts can run. That’s why we offer raw data, through an API or a via CSVs. We give you data for your database, so that your analysts can conduct the research they need, how ...

Life Moves Pretty Fast

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 complete. ...

Lessons Learned In Public Procurement

The National Audit office is working on a Lessons Learned report, highlighting opportunities for change in public procurement. Topics will include commercial and financial management, efficiency and savings and procurement and contract management. The government’s policy is to use competition as part of public sector procurement whenever possible as a way of improving efficiency through reducing costs, raising quality, and generating ...

Australian Government Covid Procurement Findings

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. Professor Halton is a well-respected and experienced leader in the health sector, with roles including former ...

Hungary Passes Transparency Bills.

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. This comes after the condemnation by the European Parliament last month that Hungary is no longer a "full democracy" because of the “deliberate and systematic efforts of the Hungarian government” to undermine ...

New enRichMyData project offers innovative solutions for data enrichment

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 Enrichment Pipelines for AI-driven Business Products and Services. The initiative is funded by the European Commission under the Horizon ...

£900k Government Fund To Help Charities Win Public Contracts.

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 to increase its participation in public service procurement in England. The Contract Readiness Fund is worth ...

New EU Procurement Instrument Now Law.

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. This International Procurement Instrument (IPI) outlines new regulations limiting non-EU companies’ access to the open EU public procurement market if their governments do not offer similar access to public tenders to ...

Blacklisting Gets Tested.

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 debarring companies. “It won’t be hard for lawyers to draft ...

Thurrock Exposes Transparency Blind Spot

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. TBIJ’s investigation has taken three years and focuses on large investments from multiple councils in firms run ...

New Zealand Government Reviewing Procurement System.

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 spends approximately  NZ$51.5bn (US$35.8bn) annually on goods and services. Their procurement overhaul is based on three key pillars, ...

Collecting Data For Sustainable Procurement In Construction

Over the last few weeks we have been looking at setting a sustainable procurement framework in the construction industry, and what kind of  data is needed to assist with this process. In this article we will look at how to best collect data. Specifically, we introduce some of the methods that can be used to collect ...

Selecting Data For Sustainable Procurement In Construction

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 detailed planning of resource use during the ...

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