Challenges facing public procurement

The International Research Study of Public Procurement (IRSPP) was an idea that turned into a reality, representing one of the most significant contributions to public procurement research and practice. This first phase of the study saw academics and practitioners from around the world joining to ask each other ‘why’ and ‘how’. We entered the study not knowing what might be achieved and whether there was any long-term benefit of working across nations on something that might be quite specific to individual countries. Getting into and understanding the detail in each country, in different parts of the public sector, was a massive task given the vast amount of data we generated. However, it gradually became evident from that detail that different nations were adopting different approaches to public procurement. This first study enabled two very important deliverables – first, the network of people around the world and, second, a new framework for classifying public procurement.