Building a Real-time Model of the UK Public Sector Procurement Industry

改革英国公共采购是政府的一个主要优先事项。新举措（在最近的绿色文件中概述）将采购转型置于COVID-19后经济复苏的核心。此外，2021年1月，英国独立加入《世界贸易组织政府采购协定》，开启了巨大的国际采购机会。英国政府希望利用每年2900亿英镑的公共采购支出来推动经济增长，并在公共部门实现创新和改进，并改善中小企业和社会企业获得公共合同的机会。为了提高透明度，让合适的供应商/财团能够竞标合同，公共部门根据公平竞争法的规定，必须将所有机会作为投标书公布。然而，真正的透明还不存在。招标公告分散，潜在供应商需要搜索多个平台才能找到合适的投标书，这对进入公开市场造成了障碍。中小企业的处境更为不利，因为较大的企业往往有更多的资源从许多渠道寻找有关的投标书，与公共部门的实体建立关系，并通过了解可能很快要招标的要求而获得优势。对于寻求私营部门服务的公共机构来说，目前的制度同样具有挑战性，因为它们无法了解供应商的业绩记录，也无法在供应商制定的投标之外衡量其交付能力。结果是，大型合同往往被授予最方便的供应商，而不是最合适的供应商，导致纳税人的钱花得很不值，引发了令人难以置信的昂贵争议（例如，2019年Carillion的崩溃留下了50个，000人失业）。Stotles正在申请最佳一流的数据科学和机器学习技术，将这些分散的公共部门数据转化为知识库，为利益相关者提供信息和工具，以实现公共合同的最大价值。该创新英国项目将开发工具，为潜在供应商提供日益相关的领先指标，使他们能够主动与买家接触，并允许买家快速准确地评估供应商的适合度。解决这一结构性挑战将为新的供应商和中小企业释放公共部门的机会和价值链，并使买家能够为纳税人提供更好的公共服务和物有所值。

Transforming UK public procurement is a major government priority. New initiatives (outlined in a recent Green Paper) place procurement-transformation at the heart of post-COVID-19 economic recovery. Additionally, January 2021 saw the UK independently join the 'WTO Agreement on Government Procurement', unlocking huge international procurement opportunities. The UK government wishes to leverage the £290bn annual spend on public procurement to drive economic growth and deliver innovation and improvement across the public sector, and to improve public-contract-access for SMEs and social enterprises.To increase transparency and enable suitable suppliers/consortia to bid for contracts, the public sector is mandated by fair competition law to publish all opportunities as tenders.However, true transparency does not yet exist. Tender publications are scattered, with potential suppliers needing to search multiple platforms to find suitable tenders, creating a barrier to entry to the public market. SMEs are further disadvantaged as larger enterprises often have greater resources to scour many sources for relevant tenders, build relationships with public-sector entities, and gain an advantage by understanding requirements that may soon be put out to tender. The current system is equally challenging for public bodies seeking services from the private sector, as they have no visibility over suppliers' track records or ability to benchmark their capability to deliver outside of a bid created by the supplier.The outcome is a procurement landscape where large contracts are often awarded to the most convenient suppliers rather than the best-fit, resulting in poor value-for-money for the taxpayer and incredibly expensive controversies (e.g. the collapse of Carillion in 2019 that left 50,000 people unemployed).Stotles is applying best-in-class data science and machine learning technology to turn this fragmented public sector data into a knowledge base that gives stakeholders the information and the tools to deliver the maximum value on public contracts. This Innovate UK project will develop the tools to deliver potential suppliers with increasingly relevant leading indicators, enabling them to proactively engage with buyers and to allow buyers to quickly and accurately assess supplier fit. Solving this structural challenge will unlock public-sector opportunities and value chains for new suppliers and SMEs, and empower buyers to deliver better public services and value-for-money to taxpayers.