Spending $400bn – A Demanding Task For Biden.
As my colleague Ian wrote this week, governments are increasingly looking to procurement to deliver better social outcomes. President Biden began his term in office by implementing new rules in US government procurement around these very outcomes. These executive orders focus on local economic development and reducing carbon, both present significant challenges for the procurement profession.
Biden’s new policies will include a revision of the definition of “American made”, increasing the requirement for local content in every buying contract and helping SMEs get better access to bidding.
Biden promises these changes will see his administration “invest hundreds of billions dollars in buying American products and materials to modernize our….competitive strength”.
Localising spend will be coupled with new policies to push for a clean-energy economy and carbon reductions, which will include a commitment to using 100% clean energy and zero-emissions vehicles.
But the federal government will be starting from a relatively low technical base, much of the data that is needed to both understand demand and to plan for new contracting is either tied up in individual systems, or not openly available. Our analysis shows that what is available suffers from familiar issues around data quality and poor publishing practices.
Building back better, needs to start with the national procurement data infrastructure.
Please get in touch if you’d like to know more about how to build procurement analysis services.
