Introduction to Public Procurement

Public procurement officials control 23 percent of the United States Gross National Product through annual acquisistion of 2.1 trillion in goods and services. This text has been developed to provide a bridge between those who operate within the public sector and academia as a fist step toward identifying the body of knowledge associated with public procurement. This text is designed to provide both an overview and an overture into the field of public procurement. Public procurement professionals support operations with an uninterrupted flow of goods and services, purchase competitively by keeping ahead of the marketplace and all the while balance the dynamic tradeoffs among efficiency, equity and fairness, in addition to and competing with socio-economic objectives. This book is the first in a series devoted to the study and application of public procurement in today's changing governmental environment and will prove to be a valuable resource, today and in the future.