An American Take on the British Debate Over Public Procurement as a Stimulus to Private Sector Competition and Innovation

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Very interesting stuff coming out of the United Kingdom! Thanks to our friends at the Contracting Intelligence Blog, we have learned of a very interesting development springing out of the British Parliament these days over how governmental procurement can stimulate innovation and small business competitiveness through open and fair acquisition processes. The House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee has been looking into the broad question: Can public procurement be used as a tool to stimulate innovation? The committee is specifically addressing four areas of concern:

1. The role of public procurement as a tool for stimulating commercially valuable innovation within industry



2. The success or failure of current public procurement processes, mechanisms and tools in stimulating innovation within industry


3. Potential mechanisms and processes for stimulating innovation in industry through public procurement, and any relevant comparisons overseas


4. The impact of departmental and other government structures, processes and cultures on the use of procurement as an innovation tool, and cross-government and departmental efforts to co-ordinate and reconcile conflicts between policy objectives.

For background, you can read the full Contracting Intelligence Blog article recently posted on the matter:

House of Lords tackle the question; Can public procurement be used as a tool to stimulate innovation? « Contracting Intelligence Blog

You can also view the House of Lords Committee hearing on the matter, which featured testimony from Colin Cram, Andrew Wolstenholme, and Alan Powderham speaking to Lord Krebs and the other committee members:

A very interesting policy debate, and one that bears watching not just in the UK, but in the U.S. as well. As we have chronicled in our work here at the Reverse Auction Research Center (http://ping.fm/rY8PB), we have seen that at the federal, state and local level in America, reverse auctions help to "level the playing field" and create new opportunities for upstart firms and emerging competitors to gain governmental business, thereby finding revenue streams and profits that can help these small businesses grow into the future. As a policy matter, elected officials can cite hard evidence that reverse auctions produce not just cost and efficiency savings for government, but help stimulate private sector job and company growth by opening-up the sometimes cozy, cloistered world of public sector acquisition to new competitive forces. We hope that officials looking into using reverse auctions will consider this important, but constant, offshoot of using competitive bidding mechanisms, and as always, we're just an email or a phone call away if you need testimony and/or documentation to the positive effects of reverse auctions on small businesses.

David Wyld, Professor of Management at Southeastern Louisiana University and Director of the Reverse Auction Research Center (http://ping.fm/XFMZL)

Related articles

• Public Sector Procurement: A Comparative Look at the UK and the US (Part 4) (spendmatters.com)


• Public Sector Procurement: A Comparative Look at the UK and the US (Part 2) (spendmatters.com)


• Reflecting on the Software & Services Public Procurement Showcase (bestconnected.enterprise-ireland.com)


• Driving Information Technology Costs Down in The Public Sector Down Under: The Australian Government Proposes Big Changes in Public Sector Contracting (bizcovering.com)


• The Game Changing Impact of Reverse Auctions: The Momentum is Building for Competitive Bidding Across All Spending Categories (bizcovering.com)


• David Cameron appoints adviser to champion small firms (guardian.co.uk)


• The Ivy League Moves to Reverse Auctions: Cornell Demonstrates How Colleges and Universities Can Save Significantly on Their Acquisition Costs (computersight.com)