These investments to boost innovative public procurement are part of the Ministry's coherent Innovation Reform. It is planned that they will contribute to the implementation of at least 55 innovative public procurements by end-2025.
“Last year alone, Lithuania spent on public procurement more than EUR 8 billion of the state budget funds. These are the funds that could boost innovation. They would be used to buy innovative products and goods, which would encourage business and science to create more and to increase the rate of commercialisation of innovations. When allocating the funding, we therefore aim for innovative procurement to account for at least 5% of all public procurement,” says Aušrinė Armonaitė, Minister for Economy and Innovation.
An innovative product or good is the result of innovative activity. It becomes an innovation when introduced into the market, public administration, social or cultural sphere.
The following could be considered as examples of innovative products or goods: a solution for the integration of a smart speech recognition system; a solution for the identification and preventive maintenance of historical building damage; a solution for patient identification and medical data capture; a laser scanning system; an intelligent mental health assistant for relapse prevention; an innovative solution for the assessment of the impact and damage of hydrometeorological phenomena; a satellite data system for urban planning; etc.
Innovative public procurement differs from ordinary public procurement in its nature. The purpose of innovative public procurement is to acquire the products and goods that have become an innovation, whereas the purpose of an ordinary public procurement is to purchase goods, services or works by concluding a public sale and purchase contract.
In order to increase the number of innovative public procurements, the Ministry of Economy and Innovation has already set up the Centre of Excellence for Innovative Public Procurement, which is responsible for providing methodological advisory support to contracting authorities that plan, organise and conduct innovative public procurement. This Centre of Excellence is made up of the Innovation Agency together with the Public Procurement Office.
“The Centre of Excellence for Innovative Public Procurement will develop methodological material for business and contracting authorities, collect and publicise experiences of innovative public procurement, and provide advice to the public sector and to business and science representatives to participate in procurement. This way, contracting authorities will learn about the benefits of innovative public procurement", says Neringa Morozaitė-Rasmussen, Deputy Minister for Economy and Innovation.
The Innovative Public Procurement Facility will be implemented by the Innovation Agency together with project partners – contracting authorities or contracting entities planning to carry out innovative public procurement.
The maximum amount of funding per project partner is EUR 76.09 thousand.
The measure is being implemented under the Economic Recovery and Resilience Plan “Next Generation Lithuania” funded from the European Union's Economic Recovery and Resilience Facility “NextGenerationEU”.
