2024: News Publications Albert-Sanchez-Graells | University of Bristol Faculty of Law

The digital transformation of the public sector has accelerated. States are experimenting with technology, seeking digital governance and more streamlined and efficient 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 trying to regulate digital technologies, especially artificial intelligence, but such efforts focus primarily on the use of technology by companies, not governments. The regulatory gap underlying the digitization of the public sector is growing.

As it controls the acquisition of digital technologies, public procurement has emerged as a “regulatory fix” to govern the digitization of the public sector. It seeks to ensure, through its contracts, that the digitization of the public sector is reliable, ethical, accountable, transparent, fair and (cyber) secure.

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 the digitization of public procurement as a site of unregulated technological experimentation, he demonstrates that the reliance on ‘contract regulation’ creates a false sense of security in governing the transition to digital public governance. This leaves the public sector exposed to the “irresistibility of politics” surrounding popular digital technologies.

Bringing together perspectives from political economy, public policy, science, technology and legal studies, “Digital Technologies and Public Procurement” proposes an alternative regulatory approach and contributes to wider debates about digital constitutionalism and the regulation of digital technology.

“The public sector is adopting AI and other technologies too quickly and without the necessary guardrails. The hope that harnessing the purchasing power of the public sector will curb Big Tech and protect individual rights and collective interests despite massive imbalances in digital skills is fanciful. If we don’t want to suffer under a runaway digital Leviathan, we need to change the regulatory tacture now and move beyond regulating AI 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, 5.30-7pm, in person at Clifford Chance and online.

Featuring Professor Roger Brownsword (Professor of Law at Kings College London), Eliza Niewiadomska (Senior Adviser – Public Procurement, Legal Transition Programme, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, London) and Warren Smith (Partner at Curshaw and ex-Digital Transformation ) lead at the UK Government Digital Service).

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

Additional Information

Professor Albert Sanchez-Graells is Co-Director of the Center for Global Law and Innovation and Professor of Economic Law at the University of Bristol Law School. He is currently a member of the UK Cabinet Office’s Open Procurement Advisory Group, as well as a former member of the European Commission’s Public Procurement Stakeholder Expert Group. Albert specializes 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 on his blog.

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