"Different and curious" Public Contracts of Euroalert.net that are Mentioned on the Article of El País

As all of those who follow us are already aware of, Euroalert.net tries to be very active in the public sector information reuse community in Europe. This is something that has been shown several times on the forums Euroalert.net has attended to talk about its experience in creating value from European public contract information.

For this reason, now, when one of Spain's national newspapers of biggest daily circulation like El País, echoes this phenomenon of Public Administration releasing public data and mentions Euroalert.net among the private initiatives dedicated to give it added value, we really feel very proud because of the recognition. Naiara Galarraga's article talks about the situation of the movement that pursues open data as part of the Open Government initiatives and cites opinions of relevant Spanish people like Alberto Ortiz de Zárate form Basque Government, Jose Manuel Alonso from CTIC Foundation, Aitor García from Asociación Pro Bono Público or Sebastián Muriel General Manager at Red.es, among many others. We had the opportunity to share with them the PSI Meeting 2010 that got European Open Data Community together in Madrid, called by Proyecto Aporta and ePSIPlatform.

So, with the same spirit of free information and data access, and due to the wave of emails received asking us to told them which were the calls for tenders mentioned by the article of El País, here you have a "public contracts' appetizer", some funny and others curious:

• Curious, for instance, is the call for tenders for the supply of berets to the French Army (up to now we don't know who has wined it and which is the total amount, so you will have to pay attention to Euroalert.net ;-)...)
• What is the purpose of the Danish Maersk Oil company with the publication of a public tender about Christmas tree supply is something we really don't know... The question is that not any thing is a Christmas tree..., it seems that the cpv was not right this time, or maybe is that the well-heads are to "decorate" the tree...?
• The UK Government Department for International Development awarded four contracts of supply of condoms to support a cooperation and prevention HIV contagion Program.
• And the jewel of the crown, the contract with the highest value: the award of a contract with a value of 3,359,928,000 GBP by Highways Agency, for hiring of construction works of highways and roads in the UK.

As you all know, more interesting contracts, more business and more opportunities in public tenders market in the European Union, always on the Call for tenders section on Euroalert.net.

Euroalert.net will be again at the Open Days 2010!

Everything is ready! This year we will be also in Brussels to live the 8th European Week of the Regions and Cities, also named the Open Days 2010. The events will be from 4th to 7th October this year and they will be developed under the title “Europe 2020: Competitiveness, co-operation and cohesion for all the regions".

As you could already read on Euroalert.net a couple of weeks ago, registration is now open and the deadline will be on 22nd September, so you can register to any of the 130 events that will take place on the first week of October. Although the organizers, DG REGIO and Committee of the Regions, have estimated to welcome about 6,000 people, you should better register on the events you are interested in asap, vacancies will be covered quickly!

As you know, Euroalert.net follows very close the biggest event of European regions and cities, as we already did in 2006 and in 2008, because this is a great chance to know first-hand what is done all around Europe. The experience of Euroalert.net staff at the Open Days 2009 was really good, because we had the opportunity to attend some very interesting events, like B-Creative, or "Restoring Growth through innovation" within Open Days University. Besides, we also had the opportunity to know a lot of people and exchanging experiences with them.

This year, we will also try to attend the events organized and promoted by members of Euroalert.net community as we did last year at the reception of North East England Office in Brussels, or at the Stockholm Region offices opening. Hope to see you all at the Open Days 2010 in October!