Links I Liked [Public Procurement]

1. Ireland transposes Directive 2014/24/EU. According to my calculations we now have 9 out of 28 Member States which have transposed the Directive. Croatia may be the next one.

2. Austria is yet to transpose Directive 2014/24/EU. And so is Latvia.

3. A call for more e-procurement in the developing world. Should we just change from talking about e-procurement - what an horrible portmanteau - and use instead digital or online procurement? Just a thought.

And ponder on this sentence for a second: "As one contractor, Ashraful Alam, put it: “Purchasing reams of tender documents and physically submitting them to government procurement entities was difficult for me, let alone winning any contracts. I lost interest in bidding after such a lengthy exercise.”

4. When local governments have more professionalized administrations, they are more likely to implement federal program goals quickly. Wondering if this would apply straight on to public procurement.

5. Albert's conference on RegioPost yesterday at the University of Bristol was a great success. The temperature in the room got very hot for comfort and I am not even talking about the unseasonably high temperatures (or the full blast heating). You can find his *extensive* notes/commentary here.