Joint Strategy for Responsible Public Procurement - Case Sodankylä and Kittilä

BACKGROUND

Procurer

Sodankylä and Kittilä Municipalities

Object of procurement

Public procurement strategy and and two public procurement guides per municipality.

Value of procurement

Data from 2016 state the volumes of procurement for the municipality of Kittilä were €23.08 million and for the municipality of Sodankylä €34.04 million. This represents roughly 40% of the yearly budget.

Objective of procurement

The municipalities’ policies and practices aim to contribute to the development of a low-carbon economy, regional development, and improved opportunities for SMEs to participate in public procurement.

The two neighbouring municipalities joined forces in this initiative, both because of similarities between the two and to reflect on solutions together.

Parties and operators participating in procurement

  • Contracting authority: Municipalities of Sodankylä and Kittilä
  • Tenderers
  • Public Procurement Agent (covering all municipalities and available also to economic operators in Lapland)

Procurement – background

The region of Lapland faces demographic challenges with emigration and an ageing population, furthermore the geographical particularities of the region translate to distance from European and national markets. To counter these challenges, social innovation is leveraged to create innovative approaches to solve societal challenges, particularly by mobilising public procurement to boost inclusive socioeconomic development and stimulate competitiveness as well as employment for the region’s development and growth.

When the procurement legislation changed in Finland as a result of EU Directive 2014/24/ EU, the opportunity to align public procurement with sustainable development was seized by the Municipalities of Kittilä and Sodankylä. A new public procurement approach was developed for the Municipalities in the framework of the ERDF-funded project ‘Sustainable procurement as enhancer of vitality’ which was implemented from 2016 to 2018 by Kideve Kittilä Development together with the Municipality of Sodankylä. This project was used to help develop a new public procurement strategy and two public procurement guides per municipality, one on under threshold contracts and the other for abovethreshold contracts.

Read the full case description from “Making socially responsible public procurement work - 71 good practice cases(link is external)” on pages 213-216 published by the European Commission.

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