Public Spend Forum: calling all suppliers; the Uniform Contract Format and other stories

Public Spend Forum (PSF) is a public sector procurement global community and market intelligence platform dedicated to improving public buying everywhere. GovShop is its free-to-use global government market research tool for finding and connecting with suppliers. Read more from PSF and GovShop founder Raj Sharma here: Working towards a more open and accessible public sector marketplace – for suppliers and buyers.

This week’s latest from PSF:

Introducing the My GovShop Dashboard

GovShop has introduced a free-to-use dashboard, the newest product feature from GovShop.com. It was designed to help further reduce the barriers to entry for suppliers into the government sector by helping businesses discover, follow and monitor government opportunities across federal, state and local agencies. If you are a user of GovShop’s machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms to help you find suppliers or government buyers, then the My GovShop Dashboard will become your personalized opportunity curation engine. It continuously monitors government opportunities in the market to find the most relevant opportunities for your organization to save time, money and resource. Once you are logged in to GovShop.com as a registered supplier you will be redirected to the My GovShop Dashboard where you can start to populate your dashboard with keywords and locations to receive suggested and matched opportunities. Watch the video here to understand more.

How to bid on government contracts: The Uniform Contract Format

“Amid the head-spinning diversity of government solicitations you’ll experience in your contracting journey, the uniform contract format (UCF) sits as a beacon of consistency and clarity,” writes Frank McNally of Public Spend Forum. He studies each section of UCF in this article because he believes they are fundamental to government contracting, and there’s a good chance you’ll come across UCF-based contracts in your search for government opportunities. Here he aims to help us learn more about reviewing government bids to help us on our journey to winning contracts.

He covers in-depth:

• What is the Uniform Contract Format?
• The Schedule
• Supplies or services and prices/costs
• Description/specifications/statement of work
• Packaging, inspection & performance
• Administration & special requirements
• Contract clauses
• List of documents, exhibits and other attachments
• Representations and instructions
• Instructions to offerors & evaluation  method

Learn more on UCF here.

And in other news …

Microsoft calls for acquisition reform amid JEDI battles

MSV, a non-profit initiative of Engineers Without Borders, announces 4 mining companies adopt the Mining Local Procurement Reporting Mechanism

International firms that want to win government contracts in Saudi Arabia must open a regional headquarters 

UK government under growing pressure over Covid procurement

Gov.ie launches Public Service Data Catalogue to give citizens greater transparency of data held by the public service

Post-Brexit Government Procurement in the UK – Spot the differences

UK must “never go back” to being complacent about food production and supply

Crown Commercial Service: new direction for public sector tech procurement

Austria: Public procurement is not immune to Covid-19

Poland approves changes in public procurement 2021

First calls under Horizon Europe to be launched by the European Research Council

G4S, whose services are used by 4 British prisons and 21 UK Covid-19 test centres, sees £3.8bn takeover by Allied Universal Security Services

Don’t forget:

Contact Public Spend Forum

Contact support@publicspendforum.net if you’d like to understand more about public procurement, the effect of the pandemic, where to find suppliers for a specific category, or any other burning issue you have.

PSF would also love to hear from you if you have a success story within your organization you’d like to share. If you’d like to share your opinions or insight on a public-procurement-relevant issue please see the Guest Author Guidelines here.