Publication: ‘Digital Technologies and Public Procurement’ by Professor Albert Sanchez-Graells

The cover of Professor Albert Sanchez-Graells' book ‘Digital Technologies and Public Procurement: Gatekeeping and Experimentation in Digital Public Governance’, published by Oxford University Press, 2024.

7 May 2024

Oxford University Press has published a new book by Professor of Economic Law Albert Sanchez-Graells. ‘Digital Technologies and Public Procurement: Gatekeeping and Experimentation in Digital Public Governance’ offers an in-depth assessment of public procurement digitalisation, challenging the emerging consensus that procurement is a useful tool of digital regulation - and proposes alternative methods of digital technology regulation.

The digital transformation of the public sector has accelerated. States are experimenting with technology, seeking more streamlined and efficient digital government and public services.

However, there are significant concerns about the risks and harms to individual and collective rights under new modes of digital public governance.

Several jurisdictions are attempting to regulate digital technologies, especially artificial intelligence, but such efforts primarily concentrate on technology use by companies, not by governments. The regulatory gap underpinning public sector digitalisation is growing.

As it controls the acquisition of digital technologies, public procurement has emerged as a 'regulatory fix' to govern public sector digitalisation. It seeks to ensure through its contracts that public sector digitalisation is trustworthy, ethical, responsible, transparent, fair, and (cyber) safe.

In ‘Digital Technologies and Public Procurement: Gatekeeping and Experimentation in Digital Public Governance’ (Oxford University Press 2024), Professor Sanchez-Graells argues that procurement cannot perform this gatekeeping role effectively.

Through a detailed case study of procurement digitalisation as a site of unregulated technological experimentation, he demonstrates that relying on 'regulation by contract' creates a false sense of security in governing the transition towards digital public governance. This leaves the public sector exposed to the 'policy irresistibility' that surrounds hyped digital technologies.

Bringing together insights from political economy, public policy, science, technology, and legal scholarship, ‘Digital Technologies and Public Procurement’ proposes an alternative regulatory approach and contributes to broader debates of digital constitutionalism and digital technology regulation.

"The public sector is adopting AI and other technologies too quickly and without the necessary guardrails. Hoping that leveraging the public sector's buying power will rein in Big Tech and protect individual rights and collective interests, despite massive imbalances in digital skills, is fanciful. If we do not want to suffer under a runaway digital Leviathan, we need to change regulatory tack now and move beyond AI regulation by contract." - Professor Albert Sanchez-Graells

Find out more about the publication on the Oxford University Press website.

Book Launch Event

Wednesday 15 May 2024, 5.30-7 PM, in-person at Clifford Chance and online.

With discussants Professor Roger Brownsword (Professor of Law at Kings College London), Eliza Niewiadomska (Senior Counsel - Public Procurement, Legal Transition Programme, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London), and Warren Smith (Partner at Curshaw and former digital transformation lead at the UK Government Digital Service).

Find out more and register for the event via the Clifford Chance website.

Further information

Professor Albert Sanchez-Graells is Co-Director of the Centre for Global Law and Innovation and a Professor of Economic Law at the University of Bristol Law School. He is currently a member of the UK Cabinet Office’s Open Contracting Advisory Group, as well as a former Member of the European Commission Stakeholder Expert Group on Public Procurement. Albert specialises in EU economic law and, in particular, competition law, public procurement and digital regulation. His most recent monograph was supported by the British Academy through a prestigious Mid-Career Fellowship in 2022/23. Albert's working papers are available at SSRN and his analysis of current legal developments is published in his blog.

The Centre for Global Law and Innovation (CGLI) brings together scholars with an interest in drivers of innovation and global regulatory trends in law. Taking a broad and inclusive approach to innovation, the work of its members focuses on areas such as trade, procurement, investment, finance, intellectual property, information technology, regulation and health law.