Towards a national strategy for public procurement

Public procurement accounts for a large share of the State’s spending, billions of euros each year are spent on goods, services and works to support the State deliver its public services.

In many sectors such as energy, transport, waste management, social protection, and the provision of health or education services, public authorities are the principal buyers. Strategic public procurement ensures that public money is spent in the best possible way, delivering value for money for the people of Ireland and contributing to government’s wider horizontal ambitions around supporting indigenous industry while factoring in environmental and wider societal considerations.

Public bodies can use their procurement to stimulate employment, including among those disadvantaged groups that are underemployed, it can promote innovation, support the growth of SMEs, including social enterprises, and progress government objectives in the areas of climate change and social inclusion. Increasingly, the EU sees public procurement as a tool for steering investment.

Achieving these goals requires a collaborative, strategic approach and the Office of Government Procurement (OGP) is currently developing Ireland’s first National Public Procurement strategy. As part of this, the OGP conducted qualitative and quantitative research as part of an extensive public consultation exercise, to ensure the National Public Procurement Strategy worked for all stakeholders.

Why do we need a strategy?

The Programme for Government: Securing Ireland’s Future includes a commitment to reviewing the public procurement process to make it more transparent and work to ensure greater participation from SMEs in Ireland. The EU is also revising existing public procurement rules.

With EU amendments happening and the power of strategic public procurement coming more into focus it is timely to have a first National Public Procurement Strategy for Ireland.

What is the Strategy going to achieve?

The ambition of the Strategy is to improve the lives of the people of Ireland through the delivery of strategic, innovative, sustainable, and transparent public procurement that supports competition and value for money. It will achieve this by supporting SMEs, micro enterprises and indigenous firms and developing the commercial capability of public buyers and policymakers in Ireland. The Strategy will be designed to support the procurement system to be sufficiently agile to respond to wider economic, environmental, societal and geopolitical challenges, and facilitate a culture of innovation in public procurement to ensure the best possible outcomes are achieved for those living here.

In order to do this, three foundational policy positions have been adopted. The strategy must:

• be in the public’s best interest;
• enable public buyers to better access the markets on which they rely; and
• make participation in public procurement easier for suppliers.

How do we ensure the strategy works for all stakeholders?

In order to ensure the strategy works for all stakeholders, the OGP held public consultation workshops in Dublin and Cork in May with open invites to stakeholders interested in public procurement. Attendees were asked for their views on a number of strategic themes and these inputs are being considered and will feed into the overall strategy. As well as the public consultation workshops, the OGP also developed a survey for interested parties to complete and held bilateral meetings with industry bodies and government departments over the course of a two-month public consultation period. There was also engagement at political and European levels in the run up to the public consultation and well in advance of it. In September 2024, the OGP in partnership with the European Commission ran a national ‘strategic dialogue’ on the use of green, socially responsible and innovation public procurement. The output of this dialogue was the publication of a roadmap towards a National Public Procurement Strategy which is available on the gov.ie/ogp website.

OGP outreach and engagement

The OGP runs regular nationwide in-person network events and online information sessions for public buyers. This year, there will also be an OGP supplier event on 11 November which will be held in the Aviva Stadium and will give suppliers an opportunity to meet public buyers from OGP and the various central purchasing bodies. The event is being held in collaboration with InterTrade Ireland. This free event represents a unique opportunity for sellers interested in selling to Government to speak directly to public buyers and State agencies about how to grow your business and successfully tender for public procurement opportunities. More information will be available on the OGP’s social media channels and on the gov.ie/ogp website.

Digital transformation in public procurement

As well as being one of five central purchasing bodies in Ireland, the OGP is the national authority on public procurement in Ireland, with responsibility for procurement policy in the State. The OGP’s remit also extends to managing eTenders, the national electronic tendering platform and leading on the digital transformation of public procurement.

In order to deliver on this ambition, The OGP has worked with stakeholders including the OECD to develop a new strategy for the digital transformation of public procurement. It has been informed by significant stakeholder engagement and consultation including interviews, surveys of contracting authorities and economic operators, stakeholder workshops and engagement with other EU member states. Exploration of the strengths, challenges and opportunities in the current public procurement ecosystem allowed the OGP to develop a vision for digitalising public procurement and the key enablers of this vision. The overall ambition of this strategy is to design and deliver user-focused digital solutions that will enable the user, no matter their level of procurement experience, to seamlessly navigate the complexities of the end-to-end procurement process compliantly and efficiently. Users will be at the centre of all digital solutions designed and consulted with and kept informed throughout the process.

How to stay informed

The OGP is part of the Department of Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation. News is frequently featured across Departmental news channels.

Our website, gov.ie/ogp is kept updated with events including the supplier event in November. It will also be updated with progress on the National Strategy for Public Procurement and the OGP Strategy for Digital Transformation. You can also follow the OGP on LinkedIn and contact our support line with general queries by emailing support@ogp.gov.ie

Any queries in relation to the national strategy for public procurement should be emailed to strategy@ogp.gov.ie