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1. The Crown Commercial Service wants help re-designing its digital services. My suggestion is to put all the damn procurement data available on a easily searchable database format. No, excel spreadsheets are not what I am thinking about. But that is for the ex-post, while the Digital Services Team is
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1. Location, location, location. Interesting opinion from Advocate-General Szupnar in Case C-552/13 Grupo Hospitalario Quiron* vs Departament de Sanidad del Gobierno Vasco & Instituto de Religiosas Siervas de Jesus de la Caridad. The AG found (correctly) that health care services cannot be restricted to certain territorial boundaries unless under
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1. Getting rid of PQQs has unintended consequences as same questions are now asked in full tender. I was about to file this on the "hogwash & bullshit" file as ConstructionLine has a vested interest here, but changed my mind after thinking about it . As I have argued
Public Procurement
1. Blockchain can be used for supply chain tracking. It seems my idea last week of using some sort of blockchain technology to solve the reputation issue in public procurement and a decentralised contract repository/database is not as crazy as I originally thought. 2. Canada wakes up to open
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1. The only real PPP in Portugal is dead (Portuguese only). By real I mean a deal where the risk stayed with the private contractor instead of the public sector. Teixeira Duarte (private contractor) allegedly lost €42M in the deal, a significant sum in a small country like Portugal. 2.
Public Procurement
1. The Small Business Act may have an impact in public procurement here in the UK? Crown Commercial Services says it is not a land grab. 2. Portugal saves up to €2,000,000,000 re-negotiating PPP/PFI contracts. Over the last 20 years the country was blanketed (bankrupted) with
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1. Are urban developments subject to procurement rules (or at least principles)? Good case report by Paul Henty. I remember vividly a discussion back in 2007/8 with my then Ph.D supervisor about how come development contracts are not considered relevant for the internal market and as such subject
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1. Amazon third party seller is sued for price fixing. And the European Commission is also looking into competition on e-commerce. 2. Court of Appeal extends privacy law in England and Wales? 3. Facebook ignores EU data protection rules and tracks everyone. Not really news I suppose... 4. Microsoft is
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1. More data about England's Mystery Shopper Service. I still think it should morph into a proper Procurement Ombudsman a la Canadian. 2. NESTA's 6 ideas how procurement stifles innovation. Sound about right but for me reasons 4 (incentives) and 6 (skills) are the most important.
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1. Ooops, we spent too much on our waste contract 2. We should have a Procurement Minister, says Labour 3. Local authorities "should not gold plate procurement says minister." Why not regulate the way they procure then, says Pedro. 4. Wales will refresh its procurement policy, said Jane
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1. Apparently I want to overthrow the current procurement framework. Well, sort of. (Will post heretic text here later today or tomorrow) 2. There is (was?) an enterprising trade in fake social security declarations/certificates in Portugal. (Portuguese only) A few thousand euros was all it took to get a
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1. Greece to exclude German firms from public procurement? Apparently Greece wants to kick out Siemens, Reihnmethall and Airbus from (defence?) public procurement. Bearing in mind how the submarine deal ended there... 2. Public Contracts Regulations 2015 arrive 3. Random effects of scoring price in a tender evaluation Michael Bowsher