Ireland: Strategy for the digital transformation of public procurement

In Ireland, public procurement amounts to approximately €17 billion per year. It represented roughly 8.8% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2020. Policies, guidance, and a range of procurement solutions exist at national and sectoral level, including a national electronic tendering platform for publishing all public procurement opportunities. Nevertheless, public procurement practices and systems remain decentralised across more than 8,000 contracting authorities.

Digital transformation has been identified as a strategic objective for the Office of Government Procurement (OGP) in Ireland (which is part of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform). OGP was established in 2013 to maximise value for money and operational efficiency through the central management of public procurement. The Office is responsible for shaping the future of public procurement by leading the reform of public procurement across the public service. The organisation has two main functions (a) as the national authority on public procurement managing the legislative and policy framework as well as providing both the national tendering platform and support services to public bodies; and (b) providing procurement arrangements to public bodies from which they can buy goods and services. The OGP works with partner sourcing organisations in Health, Education, Local Government and Defence sectors to deliver the reform programme, which is overseen by an Interim Procurement Reform Board, appointed by the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform.

Initiatives to implement systems such as eCatalogues, eOrdering and eInvoicing; planning and procurement support systems for capital projects; sectoral finance shared services systems; and the establishment of a national unique business identifier (UBI) are underway. However, a national strategy and a common set of guiding principles for the digital transformation of public procurement is still missing. Existing Irish digital and data strategies put greater emphasis on the direct delivery of public services to citizens rather than interactions of the public sector with businesses. The lack of a clear national strategy and a common set of guiding principles could eventually lead to operational silos, lack of consistency of approaches, limited interoperability between systems and reduced ability to leverage joined-up data, ultimately resulting in a more complex environment for suppliers, in particular Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).

The OGP and the European Commission have called upon the OECD to provide technical support to Ireland in addressing this challenge. Funded by DG REFORM, the key objective of this Project is to support the Irish Government with the development of a strategy and roadmap for the digital transformation of public procurement and with the adoption of standard principles and a framework for different sectors and public bodies to apply a consistent and interoperable approach to digital public procurement.