Source: Polish government
National strategy and goals
The state purchasing policy 2022-2025 includes the objectives and directions set out in the country’s medium-term development strategy.
One of the key goal of the policy is to perceive public procurement more as an instrument that increases the level of innovation in the national economy. The new approach introduces the principle of effectiveness of public procurement in order to ensure that procurers include innovative solutions in their plans and strategies. The policy encourages heads of contracting authorities to take risks in connection with innovation procurement. It also aims to interest potential innovators (i.e. high-tech enterprises with the potential to produce innovative solutions) and attract innovative solutions for the needs of public services.
The adoption of targets for R&D procurement and procurement of innovative solutions set the level of ambition for innovation procurements for all public buyers in the country. Individual public buyers are free to establish their own internal objectives in this respect as well as their own incentive mechanisms or KPIs.
Responsible actors
Central government administration bodies are obliged to draw up their own management strategies in line with the state purchasing policy. Such strategies identify innovation procurements that are key to the implementation of the state purchasing policy. All other contracting authorities are advised to follow the indicated directions.
Monitoring framework
The state purchasing policy introduces a monitoring framework. The Ministry of economy, in cooperation with the Public Procurement Office and other bodies from the government administration sector, will annually monitor the level of use of the instruments and tools recommended by the state purchasing policy.
Capacity building and support for public buyers
The Public Procurement Office produced guidelines on innovation procurement and on pre-commercial procurement and provides regular trainings to public buyers.
The state purchasing policy foresees also that public buyers can obtain support and technical consultation from the Center for Technology Assessment (COT) in preparing innovation procurements that involve high tech solutions, e.g. to assess which technologies proposed by companies in open market consultation and in evaluation of offers could be most suitable for the procurer. In particular with regards to the digital transformation, the COT pays particular attention to:
1) Automation and robotics;
2) Photonics;
3) Artificial intelligence;
4) Data Science;
5) Internet of Things;
6) Intelligent services for citizens and businesses;
7) Digital agriculture;
8) Digital education.