This post is written by Sophie Abache, Digital Strategist and Content Manager at Open Contracting Partnership.

  • **The problem: **To respond to the climate crisis, governments will need to buy things in a fundamentally different way. But there is little practical guidance as to how to do it.
  • **Why it matters: **Sustainable procurement, if done right, can have a disproportionate contribution to reaching net zero and driving sustainable socio-economic development.
  • The solution: Open contracting approaches integrating data and participation can power up sustainable procurement practices.

When you think about the largest contributors to global CO2 emissions, I bet the last thing on your mind is public procurement. The Boston Consulting Group and World Economic Forum estimate that what governments buy in public services, goods, and public works—a US$13 trillion marketplace—is responsible for 15% of all greenhouse gas emissions each year: that is seven times as much as the entire aviation industry. So if we want to buy cleaner and greener, building more resilient supply chains, governments will need to buy things in a fundamentally different way.

Done better and openly, public procurement could be a hidden lever; done poorly or left unchanged, it will be a brake on environmental progress and leave the most vulnerable communities behind. Making a huge shift in the way procurement is done means moving beyond the lowest cost to promote innovation and sustainability and towards open contracting approaches that can power up cleaner procurement practices. In practice, this will mean:

  • Being open about decision-making and prioritisation processes;
  • Disclosing sustainability criteria for suppliers;
  • Creating open registers, contract databases, and reporting mechanisms;
  • Offering clear channels for user and citizen feedback;
  • Reporting impact and using that data to improve your sustainability practices.

Speaking with key public procurement actors about making that shift, the most recurring question we receive is “how?” So, in collaboration with PUBLIC and Spend Network, we at the Open Contracting Partnership (OCP) researched existing guidance, spoke with over 30 procurement experts, and gathered lessons from our country partners.

Done better and openly, public procurement could be a hidden lever; done poorly or left unchanged, it will be a brake on environmental progress and leave the most vulnerable communities behind.

A toolkit for change

We collated everything we’re learning into one free resource—the Open and Sustainable Public Procurement (OpenSPP) toolkit. The toolkit acknowledges that we’re all on a learning journey. It provides you with handy checklists and examples that you can model throughout your progress. These five tips will help you get started:

  1. Start small and prioritise

    Sustainable procurement covers the environmental, social, and economic aspects of procurement. But you don’t have to do everything at once. Decide which area you want to focus on first. You can begin by engaging stakeholders to get their perspectives on setting the most relevant sustainability goals for your context. These goals will determine the procurement categories or projects that you will prioritise.

    The main ranking criterion can be which ones will have the most impact following the implementation of sustainable practices. To help you determine that, you can check which items you buy most frequently and their social, environmental, and economic impacts.

    Once you have defined your sustainability goals and the procurement categories for OpenSPP implementation, openly communicate them to all stakeholders through an [action plan](https://sustainable.open- contracting.org/get-started/create-an-action-plan) for reference throughout the reform process.

  2. Track and measure to improve

    You can't improve what you can't measure. Last year, the Ministry of Environment in Lithuania launched Green Public Procurement targets mandating that all products purchased are green by 2023. To monitor these targets, the Ministry defined what it means through legislation: setting specific goals (50% in 2022 and 100% by 2023); providing assistance and training to buying agencies, and further information, guidelines, and a web page. All of this is reported in the open through a procurement scoreboard for public authorities. We have collected common indicators in this sample Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) framework to help you report and measure progress against your sustainability goals.

  3. Don't be afraid of data

    Good data—standardised high-quality, machine-readable open data—is critical to driving OpenSPP implementation and measuring sustainability outcomes. The Netherlands is using CO2 emissions as a criterion for selecting suppliers. When defining how you collect data, it is important that you understand your procurement systems and governance, establish a baseline year and public reporting frequency, and consider your capacity. Use this green flags guide to define the key data categories you need for planning and implementation.

  4. Engage with your market

    As you increase sustainable public procurement practices, you should engage with vendors to know their capacity to deliver what you need, when you need it, and how you need it. This approach helps to increase the number of bidders, promote transparency, and boost trust amongst stakeholders. Vendor engagement also enables you to get feedback on improving your procurement process. Mexico City, for example, wanted to expand its environmentally friendly and affordable bike share service to more neighborhoods, upgrade the design and technology, and all at a reasonable cost. They published a Request for Information seeking resident input on the bike share design, held multiple conversations with vendors, and published their findings on a user-friendly website. This approach enabled the team and the vendor community to make data-driven decisions, promote trust, and deliver on their goal. You can engage the market when preparing your action plan, during the procurement planning phase, and during the procurement itself.

  5. Build support and capacity

    As we have established, implementing OpenSPP means procuring in a different way, therefore, this change needs to be managed. It is important for procurement officials to know where to look for help and build their knowledge. The Netherlands’ government set up PIANOo, a knowledge network for government procurement officers and contracting authorities that offers learning materials, guidance, and tools on sustainable procurement. A similar offer exists in Germany. In addition to setting up a helpdesk and central information point, we recommend creating and sharing information publicly as well, for example sustainability registries and catalogs, standardized sustainability criteria, and continuously engaging with stakeholders.

Rethinking public procurement can be daunting. But it can be done – and it can’t wait. We hope that this new toolkit will help you on the way and that you reach out if you have questions.

Photo credit: Etienne Giradet, Unsplash