POGO Club

After our summer break, we will be restarting the POGO Club monthly sessions from Tuesday 25 October, 4-5pm BST. 

We will announce more details closer to the session. Interested? Email Leigh Crowley to join our next session and receive the latest updates.

Our June Oxford POGO call took place on 29 June, 4-5pm BST. 

We discussed sustainable public procurement in Europe, with Katharina Vierlich, Head of Unit Public Procurement Policy at European Commission.

Our May call took place on Tuesday 25 May at 16:00 (London).

For this session, we invited leading practitioners to explore data and transparency in social value procurement. This involved a presentation on the topic, followed by a response panel. 

Background Resources

• Oxford POGO Club (2021), Response to Green Paper on Transforming Public Procurement
• Peter Smith. Radical Transparency: The future of public procurement
• Procurement with Purpose
• Peter Smith. 2020. Bad Buying, order book here
• Spend Network. 2021. Procurement Inequality: Understanding the gender pay gap in government contracting

Our April call took place on Tuesday 27 April at 16:00 (London).

The focus of this month's call was system level learning in a procurement system. We explored questions on how the public procurement system is working at a regional level or national level, who gets to know and what they do with that knowledge.

Background Resources

• Anne Davies and Ruairi Macdonald (2021), blog, Transforming public procurement
• Oxford POGO Club (2021), Response to Green Paper on Transforming Public Procurement
• OECD Methodology for Assessing Procurement Systems (MAPS).

Our March call took place on Tuesday 30 March at 16:00 (London).

For our March call, we welcomed Elena Hoffnagle, Project Leader at Government Performance Lab, Harvard Kennedy School, and Gian Luigi Albano, procurement expert and Adjunct Professor of Economics at LUISS “G. Carli”, Rome for two short but substantive discussions on: 1. How to leverage procurement to improve social outcomes; and 2. Thinking about framework agreements.

Background Resources:

• Government Performance Lab, Harvard Kennedy School (2021), Guidebook: Crafting a Results-Driven Request for Proposals
• Gian Luigi Albano and Caroline Nicholas (2016), The Law and Economics of Framework Agreements: Designing Flexible Solutions for Public Procurement

Our February call took place on Tuesday 23th of February at 16:00 (London).

We had a short but substantive discussion of organisation culture in procurement processes. Our prompt for the panel was: Viewed through a lens of ‘culture’ are there tensions between (i) commercial and public or social value considerations (ii) transactional and partnership / relational working and/or (iii) central oversight and local leadership? 

We presented the law reform working group’s public response to a the UK Government’s Green Paper: Transforming public procurement. We also explored in more depth a key theme to emerge from the working group’s discussion – culture.

POGO Club January Meeting

The session followed and built upon November's meeting discussion on the UK Government's issuing of 'Procurement Policy Note (PPN) 06/20 - taking account of social value in the award of central government contracts'. In this session, we heard reflections from the UK Government and continued our comparisons to see how social value is procured internationally. 

Background Resources:

• UK Government (2020)  Procurement Policy Note 06/20.
• UK Government (2019)  Consultation [closed] on Social Value in public procurement.
• UK Government (2018)  Social Value Act Introductory Guide.

To register for this event, please contact Ruairi Macdonald or Leigh Crowley.

Context: UK Government Green Paper, Transforming Public Procurement

The UK Government has published a Green Paper, Transforming Public Procurement, that is intended to shape the future of public procurement in the UK for many years to come. "The government’s goal is to speed up and simplify our procurement processes, place value for money at their heart, and unleash opportunities for small businesses, charities and social enterprises to innovate in public service delivery". 

In this POGO law reform working group we are proposing to make a written response to this Green Paper. Please join this session by signing up by completing this short suvey to share your comments and reflections on the Green Paper.

If you have any questions about this working group or any of the others listed about please contact Leigh Crowley or Ruairi Macdonald.

Our July call took place on Tuesday 28th of July at 16:00 (London). 

• We discussed a Complex Contracting Framework and an Alliance Contracting Model in Plymouth. 
• Discussants included: Professor Trevor Brown (John Glenn College of Public Affairs, The Ohio State University) and Gary Wallace (Plymouth City Council).

Our June call took place on Tuesday 30th of June at 16:00 (London). 

• We discussed contract management and outcomes. 
• Sebastian Barreto Cifuentes presented aspects of his PhD thesis. Daniella Jammes, Mark Roddan, Benjamin Taylor and Paul Conneely offered comments from a practical perspective.  

Our May call took place on Tuesday 26th of May at 16:00 (London). 

• We discussed "social value" in public procurement and contract management.
• Discussants included: Terry Brewer (Social Value Portal), Julian Blake (Stone King), Ben Carpenter (Social value UK), Abby Semple (Procurement Analysis), Mehdi Shiva (University of Oxford), and Edward Hickman (ATQ Consultants). 

Our April call took place on Tuesday 28th of March at 16:00 (London). 

• Professor Sope Williams-Elegbe from Stellenbosch University (South Africa) introduced a discussion on Outcomes Contracting vs. Corruption. 
  
• Paulo Magina, Head of the OECD Public Procurement Unit, introduced a discussion on the OECD’s Methodology for Assessing Procurement Systems (MAPS). Check out the MAPS website here. 
  

Our February call took place on Tuesday 23 February at 16:00 (GMT). 

• We presented the law reform working group’s public response to a the UK Government’s Green Paper: Transforming public procurement. 
• We also explored in more depth a key theme to emerge from the working group’s discussion – culture.

Sign up to our new POGO working groups here & join the mailing list by emailing Ruairi Macdonald at ruairi.macdonald@bsg.ox.ac.uk

Our March call took place on Tuesday 31st of March at 16:00 (London).

• We switched from our regular programming to discuss: “Emergency Public Procurement & Contract Changes.” 
• Prof. Christopher Yukins introduced our discussion. 

Our January call took place on 28th of January 2020. 

• Chairperson: Anne Davies 
• Julian Blake introduced a discussion on the topic "Professional judgment – the scope of procurement professionals’ discretion in law and practice."  
• Abby Semple shared insights emerging from #WeBuySocialEU - a European Commission (EC) project run by Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI). 
• Supporting resources included The Art of the Possible (2016) and Procurement to Partnership (2019).

We are delighted to announce that the next edition of the Social Outcomes Conference will be held on 9-10 September 2021.

The Social Outcomes Conference is the annual convening of the world's leading researchers, policymakers and practitioners working to improve social outcomes. As in previous years, the conference will feature discussions on the latest thinking and findings from academic research, alongside insights from the emerging practice across different geographies, disciplines and policy areas. 

Read our reflections from the 2020 edition of the conference.