Description
The project aims to increase awareness of and promote the use of public procurement and commissioning in accordance with environmental/sustainable strategies. A minimum of five public administration bodies will be provided with expert know-how to develop tailored strategies and implementation plans for green public procurement (GPP)- concerning various bids of the given subject. The results of the project will be afterwards disseminated among other entities to provide inspiration and best practices for further use. Foreign best practices and case studies will be an integral part of the project.
Summary of project results
Responsible procurement permits public institutions and local authorities to take into account social and environmental issues in public procurement and purchasing of goods and services of selected social issues (e.g. employment of disadvantaged people, support for education, reduction of the negative impact on the environment, etc.). At the moment this approach is quite common in Western Europe however in the Czech Republic there is just a very limited awareness (even if our laws enable contracting authorities to support environmentally and socially friendly solutions). That’s why our aim was to promote the trend within the Czech contracting authorities and raise their awareness about responsible procurement opportunities. We worked with five organizations representing three levels in public sector (municipality, region, ministry) and we used them as examples that try to implemement responsible procurement in their particular conditions. We managed to help all of them to raise level of their understanding of responsible procurement. With some of them we looked for particular solutions for their tenders and we were also able to present their cases to other representatives of municipalities, regions and ministries. The responses of our partners and participants at our presentations were very positive. At the end of the project we published a brochure on Green Public Procurement (260 hardcopies + e-version). The brochure was distributed to all the participants of our conferences and workshops. We organized a conference at the Ministry of Agriculture – attended by 43 participants. We prepared a roundtable discussion with the representatives of NGOs and universities – attended by 27 participants. Final debate was held in Brno and it was attended by 60 people. We planned 115 participants and finally we were able to address directly almost 140 participants (most of them representing municipal/public organizations). The main beneficiaries had a chance to explore the area of responsible procurement in further details and try to implement in their organizations. We tried to “tailor” each solution rather than to build another general strategy. We believe that our project contributed to a current trend in making public procurement more responsible. At the moment there are several Czech institutions (municipalities, regions, ministries) that try to use responsible procurement. For those who have not tried yet – this is a great motivation.
Summary of bilateral results