OSCG organized a world cafe session on public procurement competencies

On Tuesday, the 14th of February, project PRECIUS performed a World Café with public procurement experts of Finland. The World Café took place in the Tampere city center. In total, 18 public procurement professionals attended the world café. The goal of the World Café was to connect public procurement professionals by exchanging experience and knowledge related to innovative sustainable competences.

Dr. Aki Jääskeläinen, Kati Loijas, and Anni Sipilä received the participants with a warm welcome. The World Café started with a presentation with a brief introduction to competences and innovative sustainable solutions. Afterward, the World Café method was explained so that a common understanding of the process and the world café as a method became clear to the participants.

After the presentation, the participants were divided into three tables for discussion. After 25-40 minutes, they were moved to the following table. The questions that were asked on the tables were as follows:

Table A) What specific competencies do you need to identify novel sustainable technologies/solutions on the market?
Table B) What specific competencies do you need to co-create novel sustainable solutions with suppliers and development engineers?
Table C) What specific competencies do you need to buy novel sustainable solutions?

During the table discussions, the moderators wrote down the participant’s responses on a white paper sheet. After the three rounds, the voting round started, where each participant could vote for the best answer to each question. Each participant could vote ten times per question, with a maximum of 5 votes for one answer.

After the formal World Café, the participants considered the topic to be critical and topical. The immediate results, further research, and the planned MOOC attracted interest. Participants also saw the event as an excellent opportunity to network and share ideas with other public procurement professionals.