Links I Liked [Public Procurement]
Ah...the dreaded post-vacation list of links. There are way too many important topics to cover on a single post, so I will need to revisit my notes over the next few days.
1. FIDE 2014 conference outputs are now available in open access. The procurement publication bit in all its 814 pages is available here. Well done Grith, Roberto et all!
2. Malta (finally?) creates system to black list companies for non-compliance with employment and procurement regulations. A little late to the party and no mention of self-cleaning for economic operators, although sanctions will be determined by a new tribunal. I particularly like this sentence:
"The government is now planning to introduce qualitative criteria in public procurement instead of adjudicating contracts solely on the basis of price, pointing out that the establishment of minimum standards has largely equalised bidders’ prices."
Two notes: 1) Malta should have done that ages ago. 2) If bidders price are largely equalised, using quality + price instead of price only is the least of your worries as you are not understanding the root cause of the problem...
3. UK Government wakes up to the need to transpose the other two procurement Directives (concessions and utilities). After rushing the public sector Directive through so that "contracting authorities can benefit from the new rules" it seems that the Government is taking its sweet time and using the full two year transposition deadline. I cannot quite put my finger on why there is no rush now...
4. Speaking of the UK...Government wants more contract award information transparency. Starting from yesterday, contracting authorities covered by Central Government are expected to discuss with economic operators what extra contract information should be made available after award. You probably know my feelings about these policy exercises: if it is indeed important, it should have been included in the Public Contracts Regulations 2015!
5. Universidade Catolica Porto is running a procurement summer school next week. Yours truly will be there, on a line up full of great speakers. Having run my own procurement summer school in 2014, I am huge fan of this type of events. Way better than 1-2 day conferences and a lot more in line with what most people need/want these days than a full master's programme.