Opening Covid Contracts

The Chief Commercial Officer of the Ministry of Defence has published details of planned changes to Defence Contracts Online. You can see his letter here.

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The NAO has just published a report criticising the government for using a ‘high priority lane’ where suppliers that were known to MPs were prioritised

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The data analysis from our recent report, An Assessment of European Procurement Around Covid, shows that the C-19 pandemic has affected procurement data across Europe.

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Procurement data often uses CPV or Common Procurement Vocabulary codes as a classification of different notices. In creating the Assessment of European Procurement Around Covid

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In October, we openly published all the contracts let by the UK public sector around Covid. In light of today’s report by the National Audit

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In our Assessment of European Procurement Around Covid report, we sought to determine the extent to which different countries relied on direct contract awards, those

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We are pleased today to launch our latest report, An Assessment of European Procurement Around Covid. The first wave of Covid-19 in Spring 2020, brought

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Recently, we published a very important data set. All known government medical equipment and protective clothing contracts were published and can be found here. This

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On the 7th October 2020, the WTO’s Government Procurement Act (GPA) members granted the UK the right to submit its GPA instrument of accession to

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By Alex Yeung. Part 1: The Matching Process Linking entities is a common theme in procurement data, but it is a significant problem in the

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By Fiona Hunt It’s understandable that for many SME’s, doing business with government is not high on their prospecting list. In the media, most of

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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

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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

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-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

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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

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-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.

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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

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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

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-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

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-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

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-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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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-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

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

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-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

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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

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-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

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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

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-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.

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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

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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

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

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-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

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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,

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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  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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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This is another post it should be long enough

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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

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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

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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,

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