The Department of Administrative Law of the Universidad Austral Together with the University of Santo Tomás of Chile, they participated last Wednesday, September 21st and Thursday, September 22nd, in the International Congress “Strategic Public Procurement: current challenges”. During the meeting, the major challenges and issues of public procurement at a global level were addressed, with special attention to the need to promote the strategic vision of public procurement.

The congress was co-organized by the Faculty of Law and the Public Procurement Observatory of the Universidad AustralThe Faculty of Law of the Santo Tomás University of Chile and the Department of Administrative Law of the University of Seville, Spain, also participated. The University of Zaragoza, the University of A Coruña, and the Ibero-American Public Procurement Network also joined.

With the premise of discussing and raising different ideas and exchanging knowledge that will benefit all of society, the Congress, based in Santiago de Chile and then in Buenos Aires, had the presence of members and authorities from both universities and the participation of distinguished national and international academics.

The first day's ceremony was presided over by the Vice-Rector of the University of Santo Tomás, Sebastian Rodriguez who especially thanked the authorities of the Faculty of Law of the Universidad Austral and celebrated, highlighting the dean of the Faculty of Law, Manuel García-Mansilla, for creating these spaces for exchange, knowledge and academics from countries such as Spain, Argentina and Chile.

The opening of the meeting was led by George I. Muratorium, Director of the Public Procurement Observatory of the Universidad Austral, who expressed his gratitude, offered a few words of welcome to all those present and added: “As an observatory, we are focused on the study of the quality of services, and the quality of services recognizes the dignity of people; therefore, we are focused and called upon by that same goal, which is to work for the dignity of people with quality services and with contracts that can fulfill that purpose.”

For his part, Aníbal Rodríguez, dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Santo Tomás, remarked: “We would like to explore the possibility of implementing this activity and this observatory, masterfully directed by Jorge Muratorio, in our country. For us, it is important to be able to identify different areas of development and areas of interest in our country.”

The second day of the conference, based in the Universidad AustralThe opening remarks were delivered by the Dean of the Faculty of Law, Manuel García-Mansilla, accompanied by Jorge Muratorio, Aníbal Rodríguez, and José María Gimeno Feliú, Co-director of the Public Procurement Observatory of Spain and professor of administrative law at the University of Zaragoza.

The first and most important activity of the day on Thursday was the signing of an Academic Cooperation Agreement between the Universidad Austral and the University of Santo Tomás.

“This agreement is very important, not only for forging ties with a university in a sister country like Chile and a university like Santo Tomás, but also for continuing to support the growth of the Observatory for Public Procurement. From the framework of constitutional law, transparency is a fundamental principle, especially for combating corruption,” stated Manuel García-Mansilla , adding: “The Argentine Constitution has a particular provision that defines corruption as an attack on democracy in Article 36. Therefore, for us, anything that deepens the analysis and study of everything related to the professionalization and improvement of public procurement is fundamental. From that perspective, we are very proud of this agreement.”

The following people also participated in the conference: Miriam Ivanega, Executive Director of the Master's Program in Administrative Law of the Universidad Austral, Claudia Deni (OCP-Universidad Austral), Mark Serrano (Universidad Austral), Helena Fonseca,  Coordinator of the Government Procurement Program and Technical Secretary of the Inter-American Network of Government Procurement (RICG) of the Organization of American States (OAS). Tania Peric, Director of the ChileCompra Directorate, Carina Larocca (OCP-Universidad Austral), Enrique Díaz Bravo (University of Seville-REDICOP), José Pernas García (University of A Coruña), Belén Aliciardi (OCP- Universidad Austral), Roberto Galán (Sevilla University),  Daniela Méndez y Gabriel Rozas from Santo Tomás University.