March 13, 2023
A practical resource for governments looking to rethink sustainable procurement
Public procurement represents $13 trillion (USD) of global public spend and 15% of global GHG emissions. It is a hugely significant lever for making our economies more sustainable, innovative, and inclusive. Governments around the world - including the UK - are taking steps to ensure that their procurement approaches promote green, sustainable and inclusive outcomes.
This is reflected in the changing policy landscape in the UK, where procurement notes like PPN 06/20, PPN 06/21, WPPN 12/21 stress the weight of sustainability criteria in public contracts. The UK’s commitments to achieving Net Zero have also created urgency for local councils to review and improve their procurement processes.
But currently, despite a number of major public commitments by global governments, commercial and procurement teams often struggle to put sustainability into practice.
Working with the Open Contracting Partnership and the German Development Bank (GIZ), we created a simple digital toolkit to support procurement teams to put sustainability policy into practice. This includes a step-by-step guide for implementing sustainability across the contracting lifecycle, advice for measuring sustainability outcomes through structured contract data, and guidance on using eco labels and whole-life costing measurements in procurement evaluations.
Since its launch in 2022, the toolkit has gained widespread adoption and impact across global government buyers. It has been translated into French, Spanish and Portuguese, and has been used by nearly 10,000 procurement and commercial practitioners around the world.
Authors
Helping three councils to analyse their unstructured financial data to optimise spend, drive collaboration and measure sustainability performance
Working with DLUHC over a 3-year period to conduct a robust, research-driven evaluation of 60+ local government digitalisation programmes
Working with BEIS to enhance user engagement with digital services to drive its Climate Finance Accelerator (CFA) initiative
Partnering with the BEIS to design and establish an effective digital policy engagement system to propel the energy sector toward a Net Zero future
Employing a user-centred and design-driven approach to enhance the Crown Commercial Service’s guidance to public sector buyers
Employing mixed-methods user research to pave the way for a forward-looking eProcurement and data strategy for the Welsh Government
Partnering with the Crown Commercial Service to facilitate the enhancement of the Government-wide Procurement Spend Data Service
Supporting the Frontline Digitisation team in the NHS to design a programme of support for hospitals purchasing and implementing electronic patient records (EPRs)
In 2020 PUBLIC worked with the London Office of Technology and Innovation (LOTI) to assess barriers preventing procurement collaboration between London boroughs.
