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» People » Mr Simon SmithMr Simon Smith
Position: EU Fellow
School and/or Centres: Centre for European Studies
Qualification:
Simon Smith read natural sciences at Cambridge University, specialising in Theoretical Physics and Computer Science and graduating (MA) in 1976. He subsequently obtained a diploma in Business Studies from the Open University (1980).
Simon is currently the Adviser for Youth and Sport in the Directorate-General for Education and Culture (DG EAC) of the European Commission. In this function he was responsible for ensuring the proper governance and smooth roll-out of Information Systems to meet the Youth and Sport requirements for grant management and dissemination under the Erasmus+ framework (2014-2020). He is also responsible for the technical tender specifications for the procurement of a substantial cloud-based management system for the Central Library of the European Commission (publication foreseen 2015).
After 13 years in the private sector providing business process and software consultancy services to Swiss, Dutch and American clients, Simon joined the European Commission in 1989 and spent the first eleven years of his career in the Directorates-General with responsibility for telecommunications, standardisation, industry, small to medium enterprises and enterprise.
He transferred to DG EAC in 2000 and was both head of IT and adviser on IT strategy during this time. Simon was captain of the DG EAC squash team, who were the Institutions’ Champions in 1991, 2001 and 2002. He is a trained scuba diver, a blacksmith and plays the didgeridoo.
Simon will be conducting a comparative examination of critical success - and failure - factors affecting large-scale public procurement projects. It is hoped that the insights he will gather from analysis of data from real-life experience of government, academic and industry entities, as well as the perspective of contrasting the Australian and European experiences, will lead to some practical guidelines - or toolset - to improve the quality and mitigate the risks of future procurements by such bodies.
