Public Procurement
The National Audit Office (NAO) published yesterday its first report into the Government's response to the COVID-19 crisis. This report does not really focus in procurement, but has a couple of interesting points for us to follow in the near future. First, the NAO has already established that
Public Procurement
I have long argued that the procurement legal framework does not exist to enable great procurement, but to reduce the probability of really bad procurement being carried out. The cavalier approach taken by the UK Government in its COVID-19 related procurement shows the importance and value of the 'regular&
Public Procurement
I haven't had much time to look into #ventilatorgate in the past couple of weeks, but there was an interesting development last Friday with an update from the Cabinet Office. On this update we found out that: 1. The UK received 150 ventilators from Sweden in the first
Public Procurement
As mentioned earlier in the blog, Portugal decided to change some of the rules regulating the use of the negotiated procedure without prior publication. At the time I warned the changes made a weak system even weaker and prone to abuse. Yesterday I got wind on Twitter of a contract
Public Procurement
It is now early May and over the last few days a small number of news pieces about the process. NBC has one about how some of the Chinese ventilators could kill patients if deployed in hospitals. More interestingly, both the FT and The Guardian have broader pieces of the
Public Procurement
Yesterday I mentioned trust as the key currency of the COVID-19 crisis. That was done in the context of procurement but it is valid in other Government activities and none more so than the contact tracing apps we will have to rely on as we exit the lockdowns. Even though
Public Procurement
Long-time readers of the blog will know of my views on transparency, particularly ex post transparency for contracts that have been awarded. There is an ongoing debate between the pros and cons of transparency, particularly its impact on competition. I am the opinion that publishing contracts in full should be
Public Procurement
It is now a full month after the announcement that Dyson had been handed out a contract for the development of a new ventilator from scratch. In the absence of any recent official update, Dyson itself put out a nice video on April 14th stating that some units had been
Public Procurement
While the UK comes to grips now with the lack of PPE, in Ireland the situation is somewhat different and the reason for that is this: “ ” Sometime in March, Ireland struck a huge deal with China for 13x the usual annual spend on PPE. I do not know the exact
Public Procurement
Most of the focus over the last month or so in the blog has been on the procurement of ventilators by the UK Government (#ventilatorgate) and how, in my view, the rules have been broken. There is, however, another elephant in the room and that is the personal protection equipment
Public Procurement
If #ventilatorgate was not enough of a procurement problem for the Government, the New York Times published an article last week about the purchase of COVID-19 tests that do not work. These are the famous antibodies tests which would 'soon' be in our hands a few weeks ago.
Public Procurement
The Financial Times published a piece last Friday taking aim at the process of sourcing more ventilators for the NHS. The author, Peter Foster, also posted a long twitter thread providing a few more details. The Government answered yesterday with a rebuttal posted on the Gov.uk website. The answer