Ruairi Macdonald

Ruairi is passionate about public procurement and contract management. He is a lawyer in both the US (Attorney, New York) and the UK (Solicitor, England and Wales). In October 2028, Ruairi moved to the Faculty of Law to work part-time with Professor Anne Davies on a project called SPARKS -- Sustainable Procurement Applied Research and Knowledge Sharing.  Ruairi retains an association with the Government Outcomes Lab (GO Lab) at the Blavatnik School of Government, where he has worked part-time since May 2018. Ruairi is currently pursuing a PhD in Public Policy and Public Administration at the George Washington University in Washington, DC. 

Ruairi convenes the Oxford Procurement of Government Outcomes Club (Oxford POGO Club). He is also the civil society co-chair of the UK Open Contracting Working Group (which includes the Cabinet Office) as part of the Open Government Partnership process around national action plans. 

Ruairi has almost two decades of experience negotiating and managing US federal government contracts with a wide range of agencies, including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Science Foundation, US Department of Education, US Department of Health and Human Services, and US Environmental Protection Agency. He has a master of laws (LLM) degree in government procurement law from the George Washington University and a bachelor of laws (LLB) degree from Queens University Belfast. His master's degree included placement at the US Congress House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, where he focused on implementation of the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 (DATA Act). He has previously worked for the Open Contracting Partnership to promote the use of the Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS). Ruairi was a participant on the Washington Ireland Program. He is originally from Belfast and travels home often.