Good practice:

KEINO Academy for sustainable procurement management

Many skills are required for successful public procurement such as substance competence, budget and pricing expertise, operational procurement competence, expertise in procurement law and communication skills. In addition to higher education in Finland that provides some degrees and courses on public procurement, KEINO Academy, as part of the KEINO Competence Centre, annually offers competence enhancing activities (events and courses online and offline as well as guidance through email) for public purchasing authorities.
KEINO Academy includes free of charge tools for analyses of purchases to evaluate the procurement sustainability, e.g. maturity of the management, analysis of sustainability and carbon neutrality of procurements (tool “hankintapulssi”), as well as impact assessments (tool Upright Impact model).
KEINO Competence Centre is part of the implementation of the Finnish Government Programme and its operations are steered and funded by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment. KEINO supports and helps Finnish public contracting authorities with the development of sustainable and innovative procurement. By implementing life cycle thinking and life cycle management skills in everyday procurement processes, sustainability goals will be much easier achieved. In Keino Academy, public authorities are networked, thus offering important peer support for learning process.

Each Academy season provides about 10 teaching days and self-educational tasks. Human resources (specialists) required for education (materials, time).

Since starting of the Academy, almost 50 public organizations and municipalities have utilized the education and networking services provided by KEINO Academy. Currently (by August 2021) 96 examples are described at KEINO website, including many with KEINO Academy services included. The amount of procurement strategies has increased. The attention of sustainability criteria and innovativeness have increased significantly within procuring strategies.

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This good practise can readily be replicated in any region. It is based on existing KEINO platform that provides information and networking about public procurements. Within this platform, participants for KEINO Academy are selected by specialists each year to maximise efficient learning and support opportunities. Academy practise has been able to combine both the procuring personnel and the management responsible bodies of an organisation, which has increased management coherence as well as knowledge-based procurement management within an organisation. In Finland, generally procurement strategies exist by 61% of organizations, whereas among KEINO Academy participant organizations, 81% had created procurement strategies. For functionalisation of the procurement strategy, plans existed among 73% of the Academy participant organisations, compared to 48% in general.