Challenge and crowd-sourced based public procurement

Hi,

I am interested in:

1. How public sector agencies and municipalities can use their contracts as potential prizes for the development of challenged-based solutions using private/general public and academic actors?
2. How public sector agencies and municipalities can purchase crowd-sourced data?
3. Is there a specific unit that deals with these questions and this area please?

Warmest regards,
Brett

Dear Mr. Roper,

The National Agency for Public Procurement does not work specifically with the issues your question concerns. However, if you would like to know more about these issues, I would recommend you to turn to Vinnova, another Swedish governmental institution. They promote sustainable growth by funding needs-driven research and stimulating collaborations between companies, universities, research institutes and the public sector. Vinnova is also the national contact agency for the EU framework program for research and innovation. You can find Vinnova's contact information here.

In general, both the EU Directive 2014/24/EU as well as the Swedish Act for Public Procurement, encourage public authorities to make the best strategic use of public procurement to spur innovation. According to the directive, buying innovative products, works and services plays a key role in improving the efficiency and quality of public services while addressing major societal challenges. It contributes to achieving best value for public money as well as wider economic, environmental and societal benefits in terms of generating new ideas, translating them into innovative products and services and thus promoting sustainable economic growth (see recital 47 of the Directive).

For example, contracting authorities may use so called innovation partnership to spur innovation, (see article 31 and recital 49 of the Directive). Another way to use public contracts for the development of challenged-based solutions is by setting functional requirements. By doing so, the contracting authority may specify a need instead of a specific solution. Contracting authorities should also be encouraged to allow variants as often as possible (see recital 48 of the Directive).

Updated: 26 August 2019

Kind regards,

Dear Linnea,
Thank you kindly for a prompt and concise response.
Warmest regards,
Brett