Brexit and UK government tenders
Although the Covid-19 pandemic is rightly the main focus of the government, the clock is ticking down towards the end of the UK’s Brexit transition period. Whatever happens, our job is to provide a service and ensure that our customers are fully up to date with any tenders and awards being issued by the UK Government.
The majority of the portals currently used by government are expected to continue after the transition has been completed. . Our system captures all the tenders released by government and makes them easily accessible to our users.
The portal most likely to be affected is the OJEU (TED) which is used by the whole European Union for tenders above a certain value (14,000 from the UK and Ireland are posted here every year). It is likely that the UK will no longer be able to use that portal and will either have to create a new one, or re-apportion the contracts going through it. This may happen immediately, or there could be a delay as alternative arrangements are made. For practical purposes, tenders already live on it will almost certainly continue. Historical Awards data should also continue to be available from OJEU as a point of public record for both the EU and UK.
If the tenders are re-apportioned to other portals then our system will simply capture them as normal. If a new UK version of the OJEU portal is created then we will update our technology to connect with it.
This all means that we’re predicting no impact to our coverage on either search or alerts. We will ensure our users never miss an opportunity; we also commit to keep everyone informed of what is happening and what we’re doing about it as we go through.
Update: recent news indicates that the government will be releasing a new contract portal after January 1st 2021, ‘find a tender’. Our technical team are already looking at the initial technical information to ensure our consistency of service.
