Opening Covid contracts

By Fiona Hunt In late September 2020, the UK Government released a new plan for delivering greater social value through its procurement processes. The new

Read more

Today we’re publishing all of the recent consultancy contracts for the UK. This data is free to download and reuse. There has been high levels

Read more

-Fiona Hunt. This simple graph gives us a fascinating insight into the respective size of government spending globally. From the recent report by Open Contracting

Read more

Governments spend a lot. How we spend this money is important for a whole slew of reasons. We often overlook how well procurement functions on

Read more

-Ian Makgill Giving away all your data for free sounds like a bad idea, especially when you’re a business whose aim is to sell data.

Read more

By Fiona Hunt. The recent report on global government spending by Open Contracting Partnership and Spend Network, brought to light for the first time, the

Read more

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

Read more

-Ian Makgill, Founder, Spend Network. Our last post in this series of three covers the skills you need to maintain a procurement publication service. Governments

Read more

-Ian Makgill, Founder, Spend Network In the second part of our series,we’re going to look at technology. Getting data into the public sphere can often

Read more

-Ian Makgill, Founder, Spend Network In this three-part series, I’m going to cover the basic requirements for implementing a contracting transparency initiative, starting with policy.

Read more

The Open Contracting Report ‘Global Procurement Spend’, is to our knowledge, the most comprehensive study of global public procurement yet. We are proud to be

Read more

Why suppliers gain from better data on their markets. -Ian Makgill, Founder, Spend Network. Better information creates better outcomes for those bidding into a market.

Read more

Why are we looking at procurement globally, when collaboration between countries is so difficult? Ian Makgill, Founder, Spend Network Analysing public procurement on a global

Read more

Ian Makgill, Alex Yeung, Lindsey Marchessault  We often hear about the scale of public procurement. With vast sums of money at stake, it is important

Read more

-Ian Makgill, Founder, Spend Network We’re passionate advocates for contracting transparency. Not just because it makes it harder for corrupt officials and their partners, but

Read more

  Looking at the data on tenders over the past twelve months gives some insight into the ways that different governments are operating during the

Read more

-Ian Makgill, Founder, Spend Network What’s the right price for PPE gowns and masks? With every Government in the world yanking hard on the same

Read more

Here are just three among thousands of public sector buyers: YPO, JISC, NOE CPC. Who are they? What do they do? Are they a private

Read more

-Ian Makgill, Founder, Spend Network When is something right? We process over 150,000 records a month. Our database now has more than 150m rows in

Read more

Covid-19 has shown us the importance of transparency in procurement. A transparent process allows suppliers and buyers to clearly identify each other, and set benchmarks

Read more

-Ian Makgill, Founder Spend Network We’re working hard on a new set of machine learning models for categorisation. It has proven to be really challenging.

Read more

Last week, we had an article featured in the Financial Times. Working with their team is always fantastic. They cut through to the issues and

Read more

The Beneficial Ownership Data Standard (BODS) is an open data standard for publishing data on company ownership and control. You can find out more about

Read more

  Looking at the data on tenders over the past twelve months gives some insight into the ways that different governments are operating during the

Read more

-Ian Makgill, Founder, Spend Network If you’re unsure what service design is, a good place to start is here . It’s a fascinating area of

Read more

Governments have rightly relaxed procurement rules in order to act quickly on Covid-19, but stories already abound on alleged corruption and financial mismanagement. For instance,

Read more

Does video conferencing make it easier to evaluate suppliers? We’re just finishing up a bid. Our heads are full of equality policies, pricing and schedules.

Read more

Why Covid-19 should change Government’s view of contracting with SME’s. -By Ian Makgill, Founder, Spend Network. In April the Government awarded a £108m contract to

Read more

Our current model of procurement uses data for limited purposes. The primary analysis conducted by procurement teams is spend analysis, where buyers seek to identify

Read more

To help public sector buyers around the world combat the Covid-19 emergency, we have built our supplier search tool (http://openopps.com/covid-19).  Our free service allows buyers

Read more

Government data is much like infrastructure, valuable when it is cared for, troublesome when it is left unloved. Government spends nearly £400bn a year with

Read more

The Government has recently updated the procurement thresholds for public sector procurement processes for 2020. We outline what this means for you and your business.

Read more

This article is the last of a three part series on competitive tendering in public procurement in Europe. We have already learned that European tendering

Read more

This article is the second part of a three part series on competitive tendering in public procurement in Europe. There is a correlation between competitive

Read more

In this series of articles, we will explore how competitive the overall public procurement tendering process is for European countries. The most value for money

Read more

BBC Newsnight worked with Spend Network to report on supported accommodation for looked after children. This forms part of their series Britain’s Hidden Children’s Homes.

Read more

  We are pleased to announce the release of the FCC/IPPR report ‘Data that Cares’! This is a report into the Adult Health and Social

Read more

In this article, we explore public sector insurance tenders in Europe. First, we look at how many tenders are being issued year by year by

Read more

South Africa is seeing an increased interest in public procurement owing to corruption and the role it plays in economic development. The question is: where

Read more

In the wake of the 1MBD scandal and the arrival of a new government, has any meaningful change occurred in Malaysia procurement?  The answer is

Read more

In this article we’ll be looking at France’s public sector demand over the past 5 years to see what the largest categories are. From our

Read more

For all its recent troubles, Europe is seeing growth in one sector: construction in the public sector. In this article, we explore the trends in

Read more

Do you need a quick way to explain procurement terms? Here’s a run down of some common terms used in procurement, including acronyms to watch

Read more

Globally, public sector contract spending is $13 trillion a year. This is a great opportunity for all kinds of businesses from consultancies to caterers. There

Read more

This is another post it should be long enough

Read more

We’re starting an occasional series featuring our customers, this week, Critiquie.com. Critiquie is an online feedback service, that allows businesses and government to get fast, efficient

Read more

Why do Government IT projects consistently fail? Below are eight reasons why we keep getting this wrong. 1. We’ve bought into a tech utopia Believe

Read more

Next in our series featuring our customers, this week: NIC Group (www.nicgroup.co.uk). NIC Group are an award winning facilities management company with customers across retail,

Read more