Pre-commercial procurement: challenges and opportunities for the NREN community

Session chairs:
Bartosz Belter, PSNC
Chrysostomos Tziouvaras, GRNET
Rudolf Vohnout, CESNET

Public Procurement is an important and sophisticated mechanism for public bodies which influences the overall market and creates policies for governments, agencies and other public bodies. There is much discussion surrounding the concepts of public procurement and innovation and how these can lead to an economically-stronger, environmentally-resilient and more competitive Europe. With respect to research, development and innovation services for public bodies two procurement mechanisms were created and are becoming more and more popular – PCP and PPI.

• Public procurement of innovation (PPI) occurs when public authorities act as a launch customer for innovative goods or services. These are typically not yet available on a large-scale commercial basis and may include conformance testing.
• Pre-commercial procurement (PCP) is an approach within the public procurement of innovation, developed specifically for the procurement of R&D services rather than actual goods and services; if the goods or services developed during the R&D phase are to be procured, this would need to be based on a separate procurement process. Commercial procurement is described in the European Commission’s communication with the title Pre-commercial Procurement: Driving innovation to ensure sustainable high quality public services in Europe (Brussels, 14.12.2007 COM 2007:799 final).

Using PPI and PCP mechanisms public buyers can influence the market towards innovative and desired by specific body solutions. Research Networks, in order to efficiently implement beyond state-of-the-art network services in today’s networks, need to synchronize efforts by building a common procurement roadmap specifying common requirements in the short term and mid-to-long term areas of common European interests.
This session creates an opportunity for NREN representatives, including decision makers, researchers and engineers to better understand the new procurement mechanisms that are available in Europe to stimulate innovation and economic growth. This session is also intended at users of Research Networks to coordinate and orchestrate formulation of their future needs and requirements from networking.

The session will consist of the following presentations:

• Introduction to the workshop, scope and expected results (Bartosz Belter, PSNC)
• The EC position on Innovation Procurement (Lieve Bos, DG CNECT, EC)
• The PCP/PPI tutorial (Sara Bedin, independent expert)
• Success stories: PRACE 3IP (Rudolf Vohnout, CESNET on behalf of Philippe Segers, GENCI)
• The demand side: the ROWANet case (Petr Pavlinec, ROWANet)
• Discussion and brainstorming (Chrysostomos Tziouvaras, GRNET )
• Closing remarks

Speakers

• Bartosz Belter PSNC

• Petr Pavlinec rowanet

• Chrysostomos Tziouvaras Greek Research and Technology Network - GRNET

• Lieve Bos DG CONNECT

• Sara Bedin Independent Expert

• Rudolf Vohnout CESNET, z. s. p. o.