Category: United States

Innovation Through Procurement: Across Europe

Spurred by the report on The Future of European Competitiveness led by former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, institutions across Europe are examining how to promote innovation through public procurement. On November 13-14, 2024, GW Law’s Christopher Yukins met with his colleagues in Europe about these ongoing initiatives.

Photo: C. Yukins, N. Meerschoek, W. Jannsen, E. Manunza, Elior Korem

At the University of Utrecht’s School of Law, Professor Yukins met with Professor Elisabetta Manunza and her team to discuss academic cooperation between the EU and U.S. procurement research communities. Among other things, they discussed ongoing research with NATO’s Defense Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA). University of Utrecht Associate Professor Willem Janssen and Professor Marta Andhov have dealt often with issues of innovation through procurement in their award-winning podcast, BESTEK. Utrecht PhD student Nathan Meershoek has written on the challenges of innovation in defense procurement; NATO’s unit to foster innovative technology, DIANA, is one answer to those challenges.

DIANA was established by NATO to find and accelerate dual-use innovation capacity across the Alliance. DIANA provides companies with the resources, networks and guidance to develop deep technologies to solve critical defense and security challenges.

Professor Yukins also met with Stephan Corvers and his team in s-Hertogenbosch. The CORVERS consultants are legal experts in strategic public procurement, innovation and contracting. CORVERS has been asked to help assess best practices in procurement for innovation, from around the world, on behalf of the European Assistance For Innovation Procurement – EAFIP, an initiative financed by the European Commission (DG CONNECT) to provide local assistance to public procurers to promote innovation and best practices.

A few days after those meetings, the European Commission announced a series of initiatives to advance innovation in procurement. Those initiatives included a public consultation on possible updates to the EU procurement directives — including, importantly, a review of how the directives might be updated to foster innovation.

Reverse Auctions in the U.S. States: GW Law Seminar

On November 14, 2024, GW Law student Justin Duffy (JD Class of 2025) presented on reverse auctions across the U.S. states. He discussed the recent federal rule endorsing electronic reverse auctions (prior webinar), and a proposed federal rule which would bar reverse auctions for construction services. Drawing from the strengths and weaknesses of those federal rules, Justin reviewed reverse auctions in various states’ procurement systems — noting which states are ahead of and behind the federal regulations, and what a provision on reverse auctions might look like in the ABA Model Procurement Code, which is undergoing an update. He was joined by Ben Koberna, who has many years of practical experience in implementing reverse auctions across the United States and the world.

Presentation Slides

IRSPP 10/NIGP Workshop in Charlotte, North Carolina

On August 22, 2024, Chris Yukins and Tom Daley (DLA Piper) presented to the International Research Study of Public Procurement (IRSPP) group’s tenth workshop, in Charlotte, North Carolina, as part of the NIGP (Institute for Government Procurement) annual conference.

Asked to address an emerging “technology” in public procurement, Tom and Chris discussed the rapidly evolving law surrounding “green procurement” (environmentally sustainable procurement). They assessed the law as a sort of flexible “technology” or “operating system” that bends and changes to reflect real-world conditions and offers a highly efficient means of sharing lessons learned across borders.

Special thanks to Professor Jane Lynch of Cardiff University who did such a wonderful job organizing the IRSPP workshop.

Stockholm Public Procurement Conference 2024 – U.S./EU Convergence on Debarment and Beyond

Stockholm City Hall photo: Julian Herzog

Andrea Sundstrand

David Drabkin, Daniel Schoeni and Christopher Yukins spoke at the “Upphandlings-Konferensen” (“Public Procurement Conference”) held in Stockholm on April 25-26, 2024. The conference was very kindly hosted by Professor Andrea Sundstrand of Stockholm University.

David Drabkin

Dave Drabkin and Chris Yukins’ presentation, drawing on their report on debarment for the Acquisition Innovation Research Center, addressed convergence of the contractor exclusion/debarment systems in the United States and the European Union. A recent decision by the Court of Justice for the European Union, Infraestruturas de Portugal SA, explained that the EU Public Procurement Directive should be read to mean that procuring agencies in the EU have clear first authority to handle vendor exclusions and to assess vendors’ misconduct and remedial measures — from the U.S. perspective, a critical step in building effective risk-based debarment regimes in Europe to allow agencies to manage supply chain risk. (For background on the Infraestruturas decision, see Adrian Brown‘s recent piece in the Public Procurement Law Review and Albert Sanchez-Graell’s insightful analysis.)

Daniel Schoeni

Daniel Schoeni’s presentation — which was very well-received by the assembly of Swedish procurement attorneys — reviewed the parallels between the EU and the U.S. systems. Drawing on his PhD thesis at the University of Nottingham, Dan Schoeni explained that while the legal frameworks in the U.S. and the EU are remarkably similar, their foundations and implementations vary widely because of their different histories, politics and perspectives.

NASPO Law Institute – Framework Agreements – New Orleans

Gian Luigi Albano

Gian Luigi Albano of Italy’s centralized purchasing agency, CONSIP, joined Keith McCook (a senior procurement attorney in South Carolina government) and GW Law’s Christopher Yukins on November 10, 2023 to discuss the law-and-economics of framework agreements (which in the U.S. system are known as “indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity” contracts).

They spoke at the 10th anniversary meeting of the National Association of State Procurement Officials (NASPO) Law Institute in New Orleans. The Law Institute is a regular gathering of chief procurement officers (CPOs) and state public procurement attorneys from around the United States.

Program Slides

Webinar Series on Contractor Debarment for Labor Law Violations

Congress directed that a report prepared for Stevens Institute of Technology’s Acquisition Innovation Research Center (AIRC) by principal investigators David Drabkin and Christopher Yukins be extended to provide training on potential exclusion and debarment of contractors that have violated U.S. labor laws. The training was done through a two-session webinar series coordinated by the Defense Acquisition University (DAU).

As DAU noted in launching the training, the Department of Labor has thousands of records on violations by federal contractors. The purpose of the training was to explain how to access and assess those records when evaluating contractors, including when assessing their present responsibility.

Session 1: Introduction and Key Findings (September 12, 2023).

Event recording and slides

Panelists: AIRC Fellows David Drabkin & Christopher Yukins

Session 2: Discussion with Experts (December 12, 2023)

Expert roundtable on accessing and considering labor law violations, including senior officials from the Labor Department, debarment experts and senior contracting personnel.  

Panelists:

  • Jeffrey Koses 
  • Kiersten S. Mathews
  • Mathew Blum
  • Fred Levy
  • Christopher Yukins 
  • David Drabkin
  • Jon O’Connell

Materials:

ACQUISITION INNOVATION RESEARCH CENTER (AIRC) RESOURCES