Better assistance for the aged

European public procurement is intended to efficiently spend public funds through transparent and non-discriminating promotion of competition. However, in reality, such principles are seldom followed because of traditional practices affecting tender selection and the awarding of contracts.

Thus, European procurers are not meeting the expectation that public procurement should achieve the EU-28 objectives for innovation and growth. Furthermore, procurers do not address the societal challenges that place demands on public authorities.

To address this, the EU funded the C4BI (Cities for business innovation – Network of urban procurers) project. The goal was to develop a consistent policy of innovative public procurement, focusing on major European societal challenges. These included active and healthy ageing and demographic ageing of the urban population. The team addressed this goal by linking public authorities with innovating organisations, and in this way affecting demand and supply.

Early stages in the work involved each public procurer assessing their procurement practices and concluding, via a peer-review process, on areas that need improvement. Each of the seven partners addressed the issues using a combination of training and dissemination activities, plus adoption of new practices.

In later stages, partners began identifying services and products able to better address the topic of ageing cities. First, they identified the needs of local communities and then enacted suitable processes. This included dialogues with experts and stakeholders to prepare pilot actions and to define collaboration on improvement of procurement practices.

The C4BI project has fostered improvement in public procurement so as to advance services to aged communities.