Global Revolution IV
The conference Public Procurement: Global Revolution IV, held on April 19-20 th 2010, was all set to be the biggest and best event yet in the Global Revolution series of conferences, with a full-house of 300 delegates and speakers coming from more than 40 countries and five continents, and including representatives from most of the major international institutions working in public procurement. But a volcano in Iceland had other ideas! With virtually all flights to the United Kingdom halted during the period 15 th -20 th April, it became apparent just two days beforehand that, with the vast majority of speakers and delegates coming from overseas, most would find it impossible to make it to the conference (including Steen Treumer, the co-director of the conference from University of Copenhagen - though we think he could have managed it if he had started cycling on Thursday…..).
Nevertheless, with a hasty re-arrangement of the programme that continued literally up to the last minute and throughout the event itself, the conference was able go ahead, albeit on a much smaller scale than planned. In the end, around 100 speakers and delegates made it to Nottingham, most from the United Kingdom but a good number also from other European countries, along with a scattering from further afield who had arrived prior to 15 th April. The two plenary sessions went ahead broadly as envisaged (although with a number of substitute speakers), along with two streams of workshops, rather than the three originally planned – one stream focused on the EU and one on more general issues. There were many interesting papers and lively debate in all the sessions, and we hope that versions of some of the papers presented will be published shortly in book form or in the Public Procurement Law Review.
The conference organisers are most grateful to all the speakers and delegates who did attend the event for the very stimulating papers and contributions. We would also like to express our special gratitude to those speakers who filled in at the last minute for absent colleagues or did other extra presentations, those who came to listen or to chair sessions but ended up as speakers at short notice, and those who went to great lengths to get here after flights had been cancelled. Rather than the usual conference awards for best paper etc, in recognition of everyone’s special efforts we would like to take up the suggestion (made by Fred Kan) to make some special awards in keeping with the special spirit of this event (no prizes though, and PPRG members not eligible for any awards):
Award for the greatest (successful) efforts to get to Nottingham in time (to our knowledge): shared by Devesh Mistra, World Bank, and Marc Steiner, Federal Administrative Court of Switzerland
Award for the most papers delivered: Andrea Sundstrand, advokat and PhD student at the University of Stockholm (who kindly supplied, at short notice, the Swedish perspective on everything in the various workshops involving perspectives from different EU Member States)
Award for preparing a workshop paper with the shortest period of notice : Fred Kan, Hong Kong, former chairman of the Hong Kong procurement tribunal (for his last-minute offering on the remedies system of Hong Kong)
Special award for delivering a whole workshop by himself: Nicolas Pourbaix, Lovells (who gave his own paper and an extra, impromptu, one to fill the competition law workshop)
Special award for supplying about 10% of our attending delegates: European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
Special award for being the only speaker who was able to attend because of the volcanic eruption: Gerard Chick, CIPS, UK (who was supposed to be in South Africa!)
We hope that, despite the unavoidable problems, all participants enjoyed the conference and that the next Global Revolution conference will go more according to plan!
The Global Revolution conference has been funded through the European Commission's Asia Link Programme, as part of the project for an EU-Asia Inter-university Network for Teaching & Research in Public Procurement Regulation. The project consortium is led by the University of Nottingham (UK); other consortium members are Copenhagen Business School (Denmark), University of Copenhagen (Denmark), Central University of Finance and Economics (China), University of Malaya (Malaysia) and Xinjiang University of Finance and Economics (China).
Global Revolution III
More than 200 experts from 35 countries gathered at the Law School in June 2006 for a major international conference, “Public Procurement: Global Revolution III”.
Public procurement is the government’s activity in acquiring goods and services from outside contractors – anything from paper clips to tanks - and the “Global Revolution” of the conference title refers to the massive reforms undertaken in this area in the last decade. Under the umbrella of related themes such as transparency and development, more than 60 papers explored the most important and topical issues in this field.
The conference was the third – and biggest - in a very successful series on the “Global Revolution” theme hosted by the Law School’s Public Procurement Research Group. The 2006 event was co-hosted with the Public Contracts Law Program of George Washington University, USA, and was generously sponsored by Achilles Information Ltd and by Bevan Brittan LLP.
PPRG Academic staff with academic staff of George Washington University, USA, at the Conference June 2006
Delegates at the conference, June 19-20 2006, School of Law, University of Nottingham
With participants from western and Eastern Europe, the United States, the Middle East, a variety of African countries and China, the third “Global Revolution” conference had a truly international feel. The conference reflected the increasingly international outlook of the Public Procurement Research Group, whose staff members hail from Nigeria, Italy, Greece and China, as well as the United Kingdom.
As with previous events, a key feature of this high-profile conference was a series of presentations of their current work by the major international institutions working on procurement. Speakers from the European Commission, World Trade Organization, World Bank, OECD and UNCITRAL all offered an overview of their ongoing activities, both in general and in the specific area of anti-corruption measures.
Many of these institutions - as well as others, such as the European Agency for Reconstruction, the European Defence Agency and OCCAR – also presented papers in the 18 parallel workshop sessions. Other speakers and delegates included many of the field’s most distinguished academic scholars; national policy makers and members of Tender Boards; other procurement professionals; leading legal practitioners; and NGOs such as Transparency International.
Reform in the EU
The EU has recently reformed many of its current procurement rules to deal with issues such as electronic procurement and PPPs. It now has plans to strengthen its enforcement regime, and to extend regulation into new areas, notably concession contracts military equipment. Not surprisingly, this has created a great deal of interest in the EU regime both inside and outside the EU, and 7 of the 18 conference workshops were devoted to EU issues.
Of particular interest were papers on the European Commission’s reform plans presented by 3 Commission officials - Matthias Petschke, who provided a general overview; Eric Sitbon, who outlined the Commission plans on remedies; and Burkard Schmidt, who offered the Commission’s perspective on regulating defence procurement. Other highlights included a forum on the new “Competitive Dialogue” procedure for awarding major infrastructure contracts, and two lively workshops on social and environmental issues.
Anti-corruption measures
A series of workshops was also devoted to one of the most important problems of modern procurement – addressing corruption, such as bribery and collusion. Various speakers offered perspectives on this subject from their own country, and a series of papers outlined some specific new anti-corruption initiatives, ranging from use of electronic means in procurement in Brazil, to outsourcing of supplier qualification systems in Nigeria.
Lessons from the US ….
With the conference being co-hosted by George Washington University, there was a strong presence from the United States. Various speakers – including several academics, and speakers from the General Accounting Office and the US Federal Trade Commission - presented some interesting and lively papers covering. Subjects covered included emergency contracting relating to Iraq and Hurricane Katrina, and the US experience with electronic auctions.
… and reform in China
In addition, a special feature of the 2006 was the inclusion of two workshops on public procurement in China, which were co-sponsored by the University’s China Policy Institute and Institute for Contemporary Chinese Studies. The workshops included an interesting mix of papers from the World Trade organization, Chinese experts, and western experts and policy makers. One focused on general reform issues, and the second on public-private partnerships, which are of great importance in China’s drive to modernize and develop its public infrastructure – not least for the forthcoming Olympic games in Beijing.
Papers from Nottingham speakers
The workshop papers also included a number of presentations from current and future Nottingham staff and PhD students. From the existing staff, Professor Sue Arrowsmith presented two papers – one on framework agreements from the EC and UK perspective, and (together with Colin Maund of Achilles) one setting out a framework for analyzing the implications of the EC Utilities Directive for Corporate Social Responsibility – an issue as yet unexplored in the academic literature. Stephen Bailey offered a paper on the relationship between judicial review and the procurement regulations in English law, whilst Sope Williams presented the results of her research into contractor exclusions in South Africa. Anna Maria La Chimia presented the findings of her work on the legality of tied aid in the EC, whilst Ping Wang offered two papers in the workshops in China, one on reform, and one on regulating state enterprises. Aris Georgopoulos gave a paper on the implications of Article 296 of the EC Treaty for integrating defence procurement.