Search results

Public procurement is one of the principal instruments used by the Commission to open up the European Single Market. This paper presents a critical assessment of public procurement policy in the context of developing policies on electronic commerce and the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) within the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The paper focuses on how business can access public procurement opportunities in Europe, and what opportunities exist for improved electronic means of access to information. The proposed future for electronic tendering in Europe, SIMAP, is discussed and compared to similar systems in the USA. The paper suggests that a new legislative framework is required for public procurement and electronic commerce in Europe to ensure that governments and businesses do not suffer a competitive disadvantage in the electronic future of world trade.

The aim of the paper is to examine the support mechanisms that exist for small‐ to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in Northern Ireland and how access to government contracts can be improved for SMEs. The paper will investigate the rationale for SME involvement in public procurement, as well as drawing upon a series of interviews carried out with government suppliers in Northern Ireland. This paper concludes that even though there are support mechanisms for SMEs at both a UK and at a European level, government tendering procedures need to be simplified to ensure easier access to contracts for SMEs.

Are quality initiatives in the public sector part of a political project or can they be a legitimate goal? These contrasting, but not necessarily incompatible, interpretations will be examined in this paper, first, by reviewing approaches to quality and their application in the public sector in general, and second, with reference to a case study based on assessment of the Government Purchasing Agency (Northern Ireland) against the European Quality Model (EQM) criteria. Through this, the paper concludes that quality improvement can be a legitimate goal and political project at the same time; that private sector quality models need to be adapted and integrated with other methods to fit public sector organisations; and finally, that their application to a commercially oriented departmental agency (whose customers are largely internal rather than the public at large) is easier than to other public sector organisations in more contentious, politically charged areas.