Technology Tools – Public Spend Forum Europe

Why Effective Web Design Can Positively Influence Your Kitchen Renovation Company’s Success

In this age of the internet, if a business does not have an online presence then it is severely hampered in its ability to compete with other businesses which do. According to the professional web designers, a business having a well-designed and optimised website can mean the difference between making profits and suffering financial losses. We are sure we know which you would prefer for your kitchen renovation company.

Now, it might be that you already have a website, but the question is does it truly contribute to the success of your business? In other words does it provide your kitchen renovation company with all the advantages that a well-designed website should do for the business that owns it? If you are unsure what those advantages are, we are happy to outline some of them for you so that you can acheive the best web design performance possible.

Human Rights and Public Procurement – International Learning Lab Hits Its Stride

The International Learning Lab on Public Procurement and Human Rights was launched last year and is co-organised by the Danish Institute for Human Rights (DIHR), the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR), the Harrison Institute at Georgetown Law, the Public Procurement Research Group of Nottingham University, and several other people and organisations, including our friend Andy Davies of the London Universities Purchasing Consortium.

This is a hot topic in public procurement, and only likely to get hotter, we suspect. Stories about conditions in electronics and garment factories for instance have hit the national press. Citizens and taxpayers are rightly horrified to think that ‘their’ money, being spent by contracting authorities via public procurement, may be helping support human rights abuses in those and other areas.

So the Learning Lab aims to be a platform and mechanism for:

– experience-sharing among procurement actors on approaches to integrating respect for human rights;

– generating knowledge about public procurement law and policy and human rights;

– producing and disseminating tools and guidance to build capacity to integrate human rights issues among procurement professionals; and

– promoting coherence between procurement and human rights in international and regional frameworks and initiatives.

Single-Supplier Framework In London – Guaranteeing Value Will Not Be Easy

We picked up on a new UK public sector contract the other day, that raises some interesting issues going beyond the specific category, contracting authority or indeed country. It concerns a framework agreement put in place by three London boroughs to provide technology-related services. Here are the details as reported by Mobile News.

Pan-London agreement will see BT provide ICT and UC services to three boroughs in the capital.

BT has won a £200 million contract as the sole supplier to provide a range of ICT products and services under a new pan-London public sector procurement framework agreement.

Potential customers can choose from a number of products and services that includes local and wide area networking, cloud services, fixed and mobile telephony, unified communications and conferencing.

It is the latest of four frameworks established by the tri-borough, comprising the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham and Westminster City Council.