Finalists announced for Procurement of Innovation Award

Five finalists have been chosen for the Procurement of Innovation Award, representing the most innovative and impressive public procurement activities carried out in Europe.

The award aims to recognise successful public procurement procedures that have been used to purchase innovative, more effective and efficient products or services.

“One of the most challenging aspects of choosing the finalists was not only that the quality was extremely high, but that the sheer diversity of fields made it difficult to compare one applicant to another,” jury member Mark Hidson, Deputy Regional Director of ICLEI and Global Director of ICLEI’s Sustainable Procurement Capacity Centre, told Cities Today. “Similarly, many of the finalists’ procurement resulted in an outcome that improved quality of life in their locality. The difficulty was in comparing these outcomes – it can be hard to establish criteria for societal impacts, so we really had to dig into the details.”

The finalists and their suppliers will be invited to an award ceremony at the European Assistance for Innovation Procurement event in Paris, France, taking place from 27–28 October 2015. The event is organised by the European Assistance For Innovation Procurement.

The finalists are: 

• Federal Procurement Agency, Austria
• Stockholm County Council (Karolinska University Hospital), Sweden
• Galician Public Health Service, Spain
• Consip – Central Purchasing Body, Italy
• Rijkswaterstaat, The Netherlands

The winning entry will receive a trophy for innovation procurement excellence, together with the title of European innovation procurement of the year, and a case study published on the Procurement of Innovation Platform. The judging panel, which is made up of respected procurement experts from across Europe, was particularly impressed by this year’s entries.

“The potential for innovation procurement to build a better, more efficient Europe is exemplified in the actions of these five finalists,” said Hidson. “Each finalist has developed exciting new solutions to persistent problems using procurement of innovation.”

The Award is presented as part of the Procurement of Innovation Platform project, an online hub that helps public authorities, procurers, policy-makers, researchers and other stakeholders harness the power of innovation procurement.

The Procurement of Innovation Platform is coordinated by ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability and has been developed with support from the European Commission, and in partnership with PIANOo – the Dutch Public Procurement Expertise Centre, REC – the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe and IWT – the Flemish Agency for Innovation by Science and Technology.

“One of the great benefits of knowledge and experience exchange is how it makes a potentially complex undertaking like procurement of innovation more accessible,” explained Hidson. “When procurers see similarly sized cities and public authorities making real progress, and when they can read about the steps they took to achieve their goals, it makes the whole process less intimidating. The Procurement of Innovation Platform plays a vital role in facilitating this kind of exchange in Europe.”