Professor Sue Arrowsmith chosen to present research on emergency procurement and Covid-19 to the World Trade Organization public procurement programmes

Professor Sue Arrowsmith has been chosen as the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) expert to present the topic of procurement in emergencies to the Organization’s technical assistance programmes for knowledge dissemination in public procurement. For this purpose she has recorded two videos. One analyses the application of the WTO’s own Government Procurement Agreement to emergency situations ( “Case study on built-in flexibilities: the operation of the GPA in situations of extreme urgency” ) and the other draws on experiences and lessons of the UK in the Covid-19 pandemic to elaborate and illustrate the points made in the first video (“Emergency Procurement in the Light of the Covid-19 Pandemic: the Regulatory Response of the UK”).

Both presentations draw on the research done for the forthcoming book Public Procurement Regulation in (a) Crisis? Global Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic (Hart Publishing), which is co-edited by Professor Arrowsmith with Dr Luke Butler and Professor Annamaria La Chimia of the PPRG and Professor Christopher Yukins of George Washington University (view more details). In particular, they draw on chapter 3 by Professor Arrowsmith, covering emergency procurement under international regulatory frameworks, and chapter 15, jointly authored with Luke Butler and supported by AHRC funding, which provides a critical examination of the pandemic responses and subsequent proposed reforms in the UK (to which Professor Arrowsmith has made a significant contribution through her membership of the Cabinet Office Expert Panel advising on the Green Paper that sets out the proposed reforms). The presentations highlight the scope for flexibility in emergency procurement and also, through the UK case study, approaches to implementing these flexibilities that can help countries to balance the interest of speed and transparency in an appropriate way within the current international legal framework.

The videos have been broadcast to governmental delegates at the Organization Regional Workshop on Public Procurement for the CEECAC region (April 2021) and at its 2020 Advanced Global e-Workshop with 70 governmental delegates from around the world; and it will be shown again at the 2021 Advanced  Global e-Workshop scheduled for 25 to 26 October 2021.