Model Procurement Clauses for Public Bodies
Five contract clauses — audit access, performance disclosure, override preservation, exit, and change notification — drafted to be inserted directly into public tender documents.
Ethical review usually arrives after the contract is signed, the integration is built and the alternatives have been discarded. This programme moves the questions to the point where they still cost a sentence rather than a programme.
The clauses
- Audit access — third-party examination, without supplier consent to the choice of auditor.
- Performance disclosure in the deployed population — measured here, reported at fixed intervals.
- Override preservation — override remains functional, its rate is reported, and decline is a finding.
- Exit — documented data export, with discontinuation cost and timeline agreed before dependency exists.
- Change notification — notice before material change, with a withdrawal window.
Form of the output
Each clause is published as model wording with drafting notes explaining which choices are load-bearing and which are stylistic, plus a commentary on the objections suppliers most commonly raise and which of them we think are reasonable.
The obstacle we cannot draft around
Procurement teams are measured on cost and delivery time, and every clause above lengthens both. We say so in the published material. Until procurement is measured on the durability of what it buys, good clauses will remain available and unused.
