Mihaly Fazekas & Stéphane Saussier: Chapter 3. Big data in public procurement. Colloquium. In: Law and Economics of Public Procurement Reforms (ed: Gustavo Piga and Tunde Tatrai), Ruthledge. 2018. https://www.routledge.com/Law-and-Economics-of-Public-Procurement-Reforms/Piga-Tatrai/p/book/9781138296480
Summary of the article
This chapter exposes the enormous opportunities presented by the emergence of Big Data in public procurement and the lack of investment and effort for exploiting these opportunities. Big Data in public procurement holds the promise of fundamentally transforming how procurement performance is understood and it can provide a vastly superior guide to effective policy decisions and implementation compared to our current knowledge. However, Big Data implies large structured and high quality datasets which are typically not available in spite of extensive transparency regulations. Successfully harnessing Big Data also requires valid and easy-to-understand indicators to make sense of the enormous diversity revealed by it. In addition, making Big Data analytics part of daily research and policy making practice requires new skills and a change of culture.
About the book
Law and Economics of Public Procurement Reforms collects the original contributions related to the new European Union Directives approved in 2014 by the EU Parliament. They are of both economists and lawyers, and have been presented in a manner that allows for exchanges of views and “real time” interaction. This book features, for each section, an introductory exchange between two experts of different disciplines, made up of a series of sequential interactions between an economist and a lawyer, which enriches the liveliness of the debate and improve the mutual understanding between the two professions. Four sections characterize this book: Supporting social considerations via public procurement; Green public procurement; Innovation through innovative partnerships; and Lots – The Economic and Legal Challenges of Centralized Procurement. These themes have current relevance of the new European Public Procurement Directives.
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