Ensuring efficiency and integrity throughout the public procurement cycle is essential to a sound allocation of taxpayers' money. Yet public contracts are plagued by corruption, collusion, favoritism and conflicts of interest. This book addresses these problems from sophisticated, academic, institutional and practical perspectives. The book's ambition is to shape the public debate in the procurement community by highlighting how corruption implies violations of fundamental rights and undermines the fiduciary relationship between citizens and public institutions. The analysis underlines how corruption may stem from - and yet be resolved - through the exercise of discretion in the public procurement system. Focusing on the effects of public corruption and private collusion on procurement integrity, the book marks the features of misconduct and suggests needed counter-measures. The work also emphasizes that the pursuit of efficiency and integrity in public contracts must be rooted in professional skills, and in ethical regulations and training for public officers. The research reflected in these pieces cornes from sources around the world, and offers an excellent foundation for further development of these topics. Expanding on prior research, this volume builds on a more active transnational academic cooperation and exchanges of ideas on integrity in public contracts for the benefit of citizens.

Innovation in public procurement is essential for sustainable and inclusive growth in an increasingly globalized economy. To achieve that potential, both the promises and the perils of innovation must be investigated, including the risks and opportunities of joint procurement across borders in the European Union and the United States. This in-depth research investigates innovation in public procurement from three different perspectives. First, leading academics and practitioners assess the purchase of innovation, with a particular focus on urban public contracting in smart cities involving meta-infrastructures, public-private partnership arrangements and smart contracts. A second line of inquiry looks for ways to encourage innovative suppliers. Here, the collected authors draw on emerging lessons from the US and Europe, to explore both the costs and the benefits of spurring innovation through procurement. A third perspective looks to various innovations in the procurement process itself, with a focus on the effects of joint and cross-border procurement in the EU and US landscapes. The chapters review new technologies and platforms, the increasingly automated means of selecting suppliers, and the related efficiencies that “big data” can bring to public procurement. Expanding on research in the editors’ prior volume, Integrity and Efficiency in Sustainable Public Contracts: Balancing Corruption Concerns in Public Procurement Internationally (Bruylant 2014), this volume builds on a series of academic conferences and exchanges to address these issues from sophisticated academic, institutional and practical perspectives, and to point the way to future research on the contractual models that are emerging from new procurement technologies.

The OECD Principles for Integrity in Public Procurement are a ground-breaking instrument that promotes good governance in the entire procurement cycle, from needs assessment to contract management.

Provides, for the first time, a comparative overview of practices from A to Z. It maps out practices to enhance integrity throughout the whole procurement cycle, from needs assessment to contract management. It also takes a global stance by including practices from non-OECD countries.

This book evaluates the 2014 EU public procurement law reform from a sustainability perspective.

“It's a fight against time." That is how the book begins, presenting a historical background of how the topic of sustainable production and consumption was included in the global agenda and reached Brazil. It is clear in the work who and what the potential actors and instruments that interact for that purpose are. In a fun way, thematic infographics show the impact from consumption and production, inspired by Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). In Chapters 2 and 3, readers will find inspiring examples of institutional procurement collected through exclusive interviews, news articles, corporate reports and scientific articles describing successful experiences in the public and private sectors, highlighting which institutions broke the resistance and became protagonists in the use of transformation potential through sustainable consumption and production. In Chapter 4, under a guidance perspective, two tools are recommended for continuously improving management of public and business procurement - the former was developed by ICLEI, for the Procura+ campaign, and the latter by the UN Global Compact. Also, propositions are presented in order to incorporate sustainability attributes in the procurement and supply management systems. Based on our experiences with consultancies and projects in partnership with governments, business platforms and academic researches, a survey was conducted with about 50 institutions, among public bodies and businesses, organizing lessons learnt and calling attention for facilitators and barriers of institutional consumption aimed at sustainability. Among the institutions we surveyed, we picked up the examples described in this work. Finally, in Chapter 5, under an integrated perspective of sectors and actors, including individual consumers, we made a critical analysis of the advancements and challenges faced in the past years, and point to guidelines for the future of the so-wanted 'inclusive green economy', considering institutional procurement as an essential tool to (re)build a global scenario that is more favorable to sustainable development.

The OECD Principles for Integrity in Public Procurement are a ground-breaking instrument that promotes good governance in the entire procurement cycle, from needs assessment to contract management.