E-Procurement and Innovation in the Portuguese Municipalities: When Change Is Mandatory

Changing the traditional pattern of public procurement for an electronic paradigm is a radical innovation involving major organizational changes, the breaking up of traditional processes and practices, obsolescence of knowledge and skills. Going beyond the European Commission's recommendations, in 2009 Portugal pioneered in making e-procurement mandatory in the pre-award phase, in a European context of multiple technical standards and lack of interoperability of electronic platforms across the EU countries. Six years later, when the creation of a European e-procurement single market is a EU mission and a major legislative amendment is underway in Portugal, this study looks at the relationship between e-procurement and innovation in the Portuguese municipalities aiming to understand the extent into which the adoption of e-procurement embraced a real organizational change or, on the other hand, if it just represented a mere adaptation of the usual procurement practices. The study draws on data from an electronic survey to all municipalities in mainland Portugal and the analysis is mainly descriptive and exploratory. The paradigm shift in public procurement involves major organizational changes but, overall, the results suggest that most municipalities do not have a clear understanding of the innovative scope (depth and diversity) implied by e-procurement. E-procurement shows advantages over the paper-based model but an unbalanced perception of the innovation dimensions has influenced the implementation of e-procurement and the degree of organizational change.

An R package for simulating metapopulation dynamics and range expansion under environmental change

The metapopulation paradigm is central in ecology and conservation biology to understand the dynamics of spatially-structured populations in fragmented landscapes. Metapopulations are often studied using simulation modelling, and there is an increasing demand of user-friendly software tools to simulate metapopulation responses to environmental change. Here we describe the MetaLandSim R package, mwhich integrates ideas from metapopulation and graph theories to simulate the dynamics of real and virtual metapopulations. The package offers tools to (i) estimate metapopulation parameters from empirical data, (ii) to predict variation in patch occupancy over time in static and dynamic landscapes, either real or virtual, and (iii) to quantify the patterns and speed of metapopulation expansion into empty landscapes. MetaLandSim thus provides detailed information on metapopulation processes, which can be easily combined with land use and climate change scenarios to predict metapopulation dynamics and range expansion for a variety of taxa and ecological systems.

Cultural Values Change in the Rehabilitation of Historic Schools in Portugal

Despite the importance of the preservation of the historic built environment for the benefit of present and future generations, there is a lack of knowledge of the effects of architectural rehabilitation decisions on the cultural significance of historic buildings. Architectural heritage conservation literature has focused almost exclusively on providing principles and guidelines, describing intervention methodologies, and discussing predicted impacts of design on material values. This thesis argues that a focus on the actual effects is needed if the sociocultural sustainability of historic buildings significance is to be achieved. Supported by an extensive literature review and informed by personal insights from the researcher’s everyday practice, an adapted model of the Theory of Change based on Weiss (1995) was designed, providing a tool to evaluate the effects of rehabilitation on cultural significance [ERECS]. Using a selection of six recently rehabilitated historic secondary schools in Portugal (liceus), this research investigated architectural decisions and their effects on the cultural values of this building typology for education, focusing on three objectives, corresponding to three stages of interventions: understanding the existing cultural significance, identifying the design strategies applied and assessing the short-term effects of design decisions on the cultural values. Stressing the role of stakeholders in rehabilitation processes, data were collected from the buildings and architectural projects, the decision makers in the conservation process, and the school community. Although confirming that the evaluation of the effects of architectural decisions on cultural values is a complex task, the findings demonstrate that the historic liceus have historical, architectural and sociocultural values, and whilst strategies did not value social values, material cultural values were generally considered and preserved, contributing to the enhancement of intangible values. The implications of this theory-based and evidence-based research highlight the importance of evaluating actual effects for cultural heritage theory, architectural conservation practice and heritage management policy.