Implementing New Procurement Policies in the Public Sector

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Executive Summary

At the last biweekly public Council, the Council declared its intention to implements a sustainable and ethical purchasing policy for the West Coast City. The council also requested the formation of a Task Force to implement the policy that will be adopted City-wide.  The Task Force has requested Supply Management to initiate Phase I by drafting a policy to buy only fair trade certified agricultural products along with clothing and uniforms supplies that could be sanctioned as being sweatshop-free. After approval from Council within the next six months, the second phase will take place by applying the policy City-wide to all products and services. An annual report has also been requested after the policy takes effect.

The West coast City is well-known for its beautiful nature scenery, award-winning urban planning, financial reputation, and raking within the top 10 location for places in the world to live. A city like this, cannot ignore the concept of “sustainable procurement” and must lead with example. As Manager of Supply Management and policy-maker, I agree with Preuss regarding  the potential contribution of public procurement to sustainability considering the size and impact of the public procurement in terms of its percentage share of the global GPD of a country (2009).

Moving this policy forward, I will have to assess trade-offs between costs, timeliness, risk, economic goals, social goals, environmental goals and green procurement. Furthermore, I will have to challenge several barriers due to the complexity of sustainable procurement, multiple stakeholders, and conflicting goals both internally and externally. It is crucial to collect and analyze both successful and unsuccessful external sustainability initiatives to gain insights on which actors and factors made a difference to the speed and effectiveness of the policy implementation. I also understand that stakeholder analysis and management are the cornerstone for success. Therefore, the first phase of the implementation project will focus on engaging stakeholders into the project.

The implementation and optimization of the SEPP plan will be a long process as the City will require time and resources to build the internal capacity required. Externally, convincing suppliers and partners to comply with new constraints, organizational culture, and practices is a very slow and progressive process. Therefore, the implementation plan will be defined by steady incremental changes in supply chain relationships over time.

Table of Content

Executive Summary        2

Issue(s) Identification        4