Commission Staff Working Document Guide on dealing with innovative solutions in public procurement 10 elements of good practice is a perverse guide on how the Commission lost control over procurement policy;
Brussels, 23.2.2007, SEC(2007) 280
It is important to draw lessons for the future from the procurement process. The overall goal
of policy evaluation is to assist policy makers in improving their activities and in promoting
innovation. It is desirable that lessons learned be well documented and shared among public
procurement professionals and managers. A conscious effort would be needed for the
organisation to benefit from the experience.
And who will provide that kind assistance of help to the public procurement official?
Evaluation provides a forum in which public procurement officials and the
supplier community can review the effectiveness of measures to promote innovation.
Honi sont qui pense mal. The purpose is of course
Maintaining dialogue with the supplier is important for ensuring continuing innovation during
performance. It would valuable if the contract explicitly provides for this. Providing in the
contract for regular meetings and evaluations will, for example, ensure that there is enough
information to enable incentives to be applied properly. Moreover, supplier-buyer interaction
can be viewed as a learning process for subsequent contracts.
Intellectual Property? Hand it over to the supplier to get a cheaper price.
Where innovative goods are developed, intellectual property rights (IPR) may arise and an
IPR policy becomes essential. It is useful to decide how best to handle IPR and who should be
the holder. If government decides to keep the IPR, it will have to pay the price for exclusive
development, as the supplier can not re-use IPR. A supplier who can keep the IPR may
consider it to be an investment, a building block for other projects. This would normally be
reflected in a lower price for the purchaser.
The proper solution for a public authority would of course be to enable free use of their IP
by all market players as a level playing field, but handing it over to your supplier, that's a wonderful
and innovative idea to reduce your procurement costs.
As procurement and comparison of offers is so complicated why not leave it to external?
When using qualitative award criteria to foster innovation, it is important to be clear on how
to evaluate proposals against these criteria. A fair comparison of bids requires a skilful
evaluation committee. New innovative solutions are especially difficult to compare. In most
cases this will require a mix of experts, including lawyers and technical specialists.
It is essential to reveal the "buying center" to the supplyer for a supply-oriented innnovative procurement policy:
3. INVOLVE KEY STAKEHOLDERS THROUGHOUT THE PROCESS
It is important to ensure the active participation of all internal key stakeholders, throughout
the procurement lifecycle. In particular the users of the service, technical experts and legal
advisors should be involved. An early dialogue between these stakeholders is essential.
Ensuring that future contract managers have an input into the specification of requirements,
for example, helps ensure successful delivery, since the contract managers will ultimately be
responsible for ensuring that the outputs are delivered by the successful supplier.
Market research before buying? Let's better speak of technical dialogue because it needs two for a contract.
Like any other buyer, government ought to identify, via the technical dialogue or by other
means, what is actually available on the market, before deciding whether and what to buy.
Inform your supplier early of what you may want, so he can understand your problem.
Technical dialogue makes it possible to broach the views of the market before starting the
tendering process. If contracting authorities want to achieve broad market coverage, they
could publish11 their intentions to start a technical dialogue. Wide and timely publication is of
the essence. It gives the market the opportunity to better understand the problem to be
addressed and to offer optimum solutions. To ensure transparency, any information provided
Transparency? Oh yes, public procurement must be transparent for your supplier.
addressed and to offer optimum solutions. To ensure transparency, any information provided
by government during the technical dialogue would need to be circulated to any potential
bidder.
Not to the public at large. Of course only to bidders who want to see it early, but keep their privacy:
To allay any concerns of suppliers that sensitive information might be disclosed to
other parties, government can provide an assurance of confidentiality, stating that this kind of
information will not be disclosed.
OK OK. LET's STOP THIS.
My dear lazy busy Commission staff officials, please write your staff papers on your own. It could prevent you from "a learning process" and avoid "innovation" in procurement policy: parasitation.
