Where is the conference being held?

The conference is being held in Kampala, UGA.

What is the primary focus of the conference?

The conference focuses on advancements and challenges in public procurement, fostering international collaboration and knowledge exchange in the field.

When does the conference take place?

The conference is scheduled to take place over several days in mid-August.

10th International Public Procurement Conference (IPPC10)

Name: 10th International Public Procurement Conference (IPPC10)
Start: 2026-08-12T00:00:00Z
End: 2026-08-14T00:00:00Z
Location: Kampala

Aug 12–14, 2026Kampala, UgandaIn-person

Starts in 4 daysRegistration open

The International Public Procurement Conference (IPPC) convenes its tenth edition in Kampala, UGA, bringing together global experts to discuss advancements and challenges in public procurement. This recurring event serves as a critical platform for academic discourse, policy formulation, and practical application in the field of public procurement, fostering international collaboration and knowledge exchange. The conference focuses on exploring innovative solutions, best practices, and the evolving landscape of public procurement, particularly in the context of global economic shifts and technological advancements. Participants engage in discussions aimed at enhancing transparency, efficiency, and accountability in public spending worldwide.

Committees & topics

Topics
Public Administration and Public Services Management · Public Procurement Paradigm Shift · Adaptive Regulation and Legal Frameworks · Rule of Law, Governance, and Oversight in Public Procurement · Transparency, Accountability, and Anti-Corruption · Complaint Review, Remedies, and Alternative Dispute Resolution · Regulatory Issues in Public Contract Management · Government Contracting for Public Services, Infrastructure, and Innovation

Why it matters

Public procurement, representing a substantial portion of national budgets globally, is a cornerstone of good governance and economic development. Its effective management directly impacts public service delivery, infrastructure development, and the fight against corruption. The IPPC provides a unique forum for stakeholders to address these complex issues, share research findings, and develop actionable strategies.

The event's location in Kampala, UGA, underscores the growing importance of public procurement reforms in emerging economies. It offers a crucial opportunity to examine region-specific challenges and successes, fostering a more inclusive global dialogue on procurement practices. The insights generated here can inform policy decisions that promote sustainable development and equitable resource allocation.

Furthermore, the conference facilitates networking among academics, practitioners, and policymakers, creating a collaborative environment for addressing shared challenges. By bringing diverse perspectives to the forefront, the IPPC contributes to a more robust and resilient global public procurement ecosystem, ultimately benefiting citizens through improved public services and reduced waste.

How to prepare

Delegates preparing for the conference should conduct a thorough review of contemporary challenges in public procurement, including issues related to transparency, digital transformation, and sustainable procurement practices. Understanding the current global discourse on these topics will enable more meaningful engagement during sessions and discussions. Participants may find it useful to explore concepts such as "dynamic-analysis" to better understand the evolving nature of procurement landscapes.

Given the international nature of the conference, it is advisable to research the specific public procurement contexts of various participating countries. This includes understanding different regulatory frameworks and operational challenges. Engaging with lessons on "engagement-strategies" and "stakeholder-workshop" can provide valuable frameworks for interacting with diverse groups and contributing effectively to collaborative problem-solving.

Considering the host city, Kampala, UGA, attendees should familiarize themselves with the regional context of public procurement in Africa. This includes understanding the unique opportunities and obstacles faced by countries in the region. Preparing to discuss how global best practices can be adapted to local realities will be particularly beneficial.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 4 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Uganda

Host nation, keen on showcasing reforms and learning from international best practices.

Role in topic

As the host country, UGA plays a central role in facilitating discussions on public procurement, particularly in the context of emerging economies. The conference provides an opportunity for UGA to highlight its own reform efforts and to learn from global experiences in enhancing transparency and efficiency in public spending.

United States

A major player in global procurement, often advocating for transparency and competitive practices.

Role in topic

The USA, with its extensive experience in public procurement, often contributes insights on regulatory frameworks, technological integration, and anti-corruption measures. Its participation helps to shape discussions on international standards and best practices.

United Kingdom

A leader in innovative procurement models and digital transformation.

Role in topic

The GBR frequently shares its expertise in digital procurement solutions and innovative contracting models. Its perspective is valuable for discussions on leveraging technology to improve efficiency and accountability in public sector purchasing.

Estonia

Pioneer in e-governance and digital public services, offering lessons in digital procurement.

Role in topic

EST is recognized for its advanced e-governance infrastructure, which extends to its public procurement systems. Its contributions often focus on the benefits and challenges of fully digitalized procurement processes, offering a model for other nations.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Public Administration and Public Services Management

Modern public administration emerged from late-19th and 20th century efforts to professionalize state bureaucracies, moving from patronage systems toward Weberian merit-based civil services. The New Public Management (NPM) wave of the 1980s and 1990s, pioneered in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia, introduced market-style incentives, performance metrics, and outsourcing into government, reshaping how public services are designed and delivered. NPM's mixed results — efficiency gains alongside fragmentation and accountability gaps — provoked a counter-movement toward 'public value' and 'digital era governance' frameworks in the 2000s. Today, public administrations face simultaneous pressures: fiscal consolidation after COVID-19 stimulus, citizen demand for digital-first services, climate adaptation mandates, and workforce shortages as long-serving civil servants retire. The OECD's Public Governance Committee and the UN Committee of Experts on Public Administration (CEPA) have both emphasized whole-of-government coordination, data interoperability, and capacity building as central challenges. Debates now center on how procurement, HR, and service delivery functions should be restructured to handle AI adoption, hybrid work, and rising public expectations without eroding equity or rule-of-law guarantees.

Key players

Public Procurement Paradigm Shift

Public procurement, historically treated as a back-office compliance function focused on lowest-price tendering, has been undergoing a paradigm shift since the 2014 EU Public Procurement Directives and the OECD's 2015 Recommendation on Public Procurement. Governments increasingly use procurement strategically — to advance industrial policy, climate goals, SME participation, social inclusion, and innovation — rather than purely to minimize unit cost. Public buying represents roughly 13–20% of GDP across OECD economies, giving states significant market-shaping power. The shift accelerated after COVID-19 exposed brittle supply chains and emergency-procurement vulnerabilities, and again after the Russia–Ukraine war reframed sourcing as a security issue. The US Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS Act, the EU's Net-Zero Industry Act and Critical Raw Materials Act, and analogous measures in Asia have embedded local-content, resilience, and green criteria into public buying. This raises tensions with the WTO Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) and with traditional value-for-money doctrines, forcing a rethink of how 'best value' is defined and measured.

Key players

Adaptive Regulation and Legal Frameworks

Procurement law has traditionally been rules-based and prescriptive, designed to constrain discretion and curb corruption. But the pace of technological change — AI, cloud services, platform-based delivery, green technologies — has outstripped static rulebooks, leaving regulators struggling to authorize procurements for technologies that did not exist when the rules were written. 'Adaptive' or 'agile' regulation, promoted by the OECD, WEF, and the UK Regulatory Horizons Council, proposes outcome-based standards, regulatory sandboxes, and iterative rulemaking as alternatives to rigid statute. In procurement specifically, adaptive frameworks have appeared as innovation partnerships under EU Directive 2014/24, challenge-based procurement in the US (SBIR/STTR), and pre-commercial procurement schemes in Singapore and Israel. The UK's Procurement Act 2023 explicitly aims to make the regime more flexible post-Brexit. Critics warn that flexibility can erode legal certainty, invite favoritism, and complicate judicial review, while proponents argue that without adaptation, governments cannot legally buy the technologies citizens need.

Key players

Rule of Law, Governance, and Oversight in Public Procurement

Public procurement sits at the intersection of administrative law, fiscal accountability, and democratic governance. Strong oversight institutions — supreme audit institutions (SAIs), parliamentary public accounts committees, and independent procurement regulators — emerged in their modern form after the post-war expansion of welfare states and again after the post-1989 wave of democratization, when bodies such as INTOSAI and the OECD SIGMA program promoted shared standards. The 2003 UN Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) and the WTO GPA reinforced expectations of transparent, rules-based award procedures. Yet rule-of-law backsliding in several jurisdictions, emergency procurements during COVID-19, and high-value defense and infrastructure contracts have strained oversight architectures. Audit reports from the European Court of Auditors and the US GAO have flagged weak documentation, insufficient competition, and politically directed awards. Debates now focus on safeguarding the independence of audit and review bodies, ensuring judicial review of award decisions, and clarifying the boundary between political direction and administrative integrity.

Key players

Transparency, Accountability, and Anti-Corruption

Procurement is consistently identified by the OECD, World Bank, and Transparency International as the single highest-risk government activity for corruption, accounting for an estimated 10–30% of contract value lost to graft in poorly governed systems. International responses crystallized around UNCAC (2003), the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention (1997), and the Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS), launched in 2014 by the Open Contracting Partnership to make tender and award data machine-readable and comparable. More than 50 jurisdictions now publish OCDS data, and Ukraine's ProZorro and Mexico's CompraNet became reference platforms for digital transparency. Nonetheless, beneficial-ownership opacity, abuse of single-source and emergency procedures (heavily used during COVID-19), and 'state capture' by politically connected firms remain serious problems. Current debates focus on real-time disclosure, AI-driven red-flag analytics, whistleblower protection, and integrating beneficial-ownership registries with procurement portals to make accountability operational rather than merely formal.

Key players

Complaint Review, Remedies, and Alternative Dispute Resolution

Effective bid challenge and remedies systems are a core requirement of both the WTO GPA (Article XVIII) and EU Remedies Directives (89/665/EEC, as amended), which mandate rapid, impartial review of award decisions and the possibility of pre-contract suspension. The rationale is twofold: protect supplier rights and discipline contracting authorities. The US bid-protest system at the GAO and Court of Federal Claims, with statutory automatic stays, is among the most developed; Korea's KIPS and the EU's national review bodies provide other influential models. However, formal review systems can be slow, expensive, and chilling for SMEs, and protracted litigation can delay critical infrastructure. This has driven interest in alternative dispute resolution (ADR) — mediation, dispute boards, and expert determination — particularly for complex infrastructure contracts under FIDIC forms. UNCITRAL's work on dispute resolution and the 2019 Singapore Convention on Mediation are increasingly cited as relevant to procurement disputes. Reform debates weigh speed and accessibility against the due-process and transparency benefits of formal adjudication.

Key players

Regulatory Issues in Public Contract Management

Contract management — the post-award phase of monitoring performance, managing variations, and enforcing remedies — is consistently identified as the weakest link in the procurement cycle. The World Bank's Benchmarking Public Procurement and the OECD's MAPS framework both flag underinvestment in contract management capacity, leading to cost overruns, scope creep, and underperformance, especially in large infrastructure and IT projects. High-profile failures, from the UK NHS National Programme for IT to numerous PPP renegotiations in Latin America, have made this a regulatory priority. Key regulatory questions include how to handle contract modifications without re-tendering (addressed in EU Directive 2014/24, Article 72), how to manage subcontracting chains and ensure ESG and labor standards flow down, how to apply liquidated damages and termination, and how to integrate performance data into future award decisions ('past performance' regimes). Emerging issues include managing AI and cloud contracts with rapidly evolving service definitions, climate-related contract clauses, and force majeure doctrines reshaped by the pandemic.

Key players

Government Contracting for Public Services, Infrastructure, and Innovation

Government contracting spans three distinct but converging domains: outsourced public services (health, social care, IT, custodial services), infrastructure (transport, energy, water, often via PPPs), and innovation procurement (R&D, dual-use technologies, defense). Each has its own legal traditions — service contracting shaped by NPM-era outsourcing; infrastructure by project finance and FIDIC/World Bank models; innovation by instruments such as US SBIR, EU Horizon, and pre-commercial procurement. The 2008 financial crisis, the 2015 Addis Ababa Action Agenda, and the post-pandemic infrastructure push (US IIJA, EU NextGenerationEU, India's National Infrastructure Pipeline) have together driven an unprecedented wave of public contracting. The convergence is sharpest around dual-use and climate technologies — semiconductors, batteries, hydrogen, AI — where governments act simultaneously as buyer, regulator, and investor. This blurs traditional procurement boundaries with industrial policy and state aid. Recurring debates include whether PPPs deliver value for money over their lifecycle, how to allocate risk in innovation contracts where outcomes are uncertain, how to ensure public-service contracts protect workers and users, and how to align contracting with net-zero and resilience objectives.

Key players