Abstract:

Innovation has been incorporated into the European Public Procurement Directives approved as a new public policy, at the same level as the social and environmental one, which should be promoted through contractual instruments. Likewise, national, regional and local governments are implementing actions to boost innovation through public procurement, while improving SMEs access to public tender market.

Therefore, Public Procurement of Innovation (PPI) is a promising opportunity for SMEs to develop innovative products and processes, that allow them to increase their revenues and open new markets. Nevertheless, only a slight number of SMEs are ready to participate in such kind of public tenders, as a vast majority is reluctant to the bureaucratic process that implies and do not have the necessary skills and knowledge.

For that reason, in the framework of the HAePPI project, co-funded under the Erasmus+ programme, different organisations from the public administration, industry and academia have joined to develop a new learning Joint Curriculum on PPI. Different ongoing or finished practices on PPI were identified and contacted to know those skills and knowledge that their responsible consider necessary to carry out successfully the full tender process, from the point of view of the bidders, as well as different experts on public procurement.

To transfer the defined industry needs to learning outcomes, a key pillar of the future Joint Curriculum, an innovative methodology has been implemented based on the skills and competencies already defined in the European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations database (ESCO) for different occupations related to the identified needs. Those occupations have been mapped with the identified knowledge needs, being distributed into different topics and classified by level of relevance, in accordance of the opinion of experts on PPI and industry development.

The result shows the learning outcomes, in the form of knowledge, skills and competencies, and classified in six main topics, that a future Joint Curriculum on PPI for a Vocational Education Training will need to cover.

Keywords:

Public procurement of innovation, learning outcomes.