Two new working papers on procurement & COVID-19

I have uploaded two new, short working papers on procurement and COVID-19 on SSRN. Comments most welcome: a.sanchez-graells@bristol.ac.uk.

  1. Procurement and Commissioning during COVID-19: Reflections and (Early) Lessons (October 8, 2020). Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly, forthcoming. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3709746.
    Abstract: This piece reflects on some common themes that are starting to emerge in the early analysis of the healthcare procurement and commissioning response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Although it largely results from the observation of the situation in the English NHS, the most salient issues are common to procurement in other EU healthcare systems, as well as more broadly across areas of the public sector that have strongly relied on the extremely urgent procurement exception in the aftermath of the first wave of the pandemic. Given the disfunction and abuse of ‘unregulated procurement’ in the context of COVID-19, the piece reflects on the longer term need for suitable procurement rules to face impending challenges, such as Brexit and, more importantly, climate change.

  2. COVID-19 PPE Extremely Urgent Procurement in England. A Cautionary Tale for an Overheating Public Governance (October 14, 2020). To be published in D Cowan and Ann Mumford (eds), Pandemic Legalities (Bristol University Press, forthcoming). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3711526.
    Abstract: In this short paper, I reflect on the case study of the procurement of personal protective equipment (PPE) for the English NHS during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. I put forward two main claims. My first claim is that the UK Government not only was particularly ill-positioned to deal with the pandemic as a result of years of austerity and the institutional unsettling resulting from the continuous reform of the NHS, its internal market and its supply chain—but also due to the imminence of Brexit and its political ramifications. My second contribution is that, in its desperate reaction to the PPE fiasco, the UK Government misused and abused the disapplication of the standard procurement rules on the basis of the ‘extremely urgent need’ exemption. This resulted in the opaque award of large numbers of high value contracts to companies that would not survive basic screening under normal conditions. Overall, my goal is to lay bare the more general problems in the UK Government’s approach to the governance of public procurement and its increasing insularity as a result of Brexit, with the hope that this will show a path for change that could avert even more significant fiascos in the face of the massive challenges that climate change will bring.

I just got off social media. Perhaps you should too

After writing this blog post, I would usually have twitted it, put it on some facebook groups, and on linkedin. This will no longer be the case (except for the blog twitter account), as I have decided to go off social media. I have deleted my twitter account, deactivated my facebook account and will no longer check my linkedin.

I have taken this decision after watching and digesting ‘The Social Dilemma’, although I had been ruminating on it since I watched ‘The Great Hack’. If you watch them, in under 4 hours, you will get a much better explanation for the reasons behind this decision than I could ever articulate. And perhaps you will decide that you, too, should go off social media — or at least change your usage of and relationship with this technology.

I am hoping that this decision will not only make my personal life better, but also my research (though this may perhaps seem bizarre for someone that is precisely researching digital technologies’ use for public governance) and, perhaps, make a small contribution to the sea change required for social media to become a force for good. Of course, I also have a few worries about whether this will muffle my voice, but I hope that there will be other ways of making myself heard where it counts (and, to be honest, I do not think all my shouting into the twitter abyss ever had any effect, so probably not much is lost at all). Whatever happens, at least, I have already felt some relief from knowing I am no longer feeding the data mining while it is an evil force.

Anyone interested in staying touch can still do so through this blog, and I can always be reached at a.sanchez-graells@bristol.ac.uk. I look forward to staying in touch.