As part of its sustainable development policy implemented since 2005, the Rhône-Alpes Region identified procurement as a major springboard for changing behavior to increase sustainability. The question was how could an ecologically-responsible regional authority be created and how could elected officials, civil servants and public departments be encouraged to systematically account for sustainable development issues in their organization, management and in-house operation? The Region called in La 27e Région to engage in answering this question by setting up an exploratory residency and also take this opportunity, in addition to tackling sustainable purchasing, to investigate the possibilities for collective innovation within the regional institution.
Having explored in depth with the regional authority staff the procedures for signing public contracts, the team of residents focused on a specific case: intellectual services. To facilitate the incorporation of sustainability criteria in the complex procedure of awarding public contracts, the team developed four courses of action with the staff: the contributions space, an area for interchanges and a resource base for establishing, within a group of public agents, the specification for sustainable procurement; the aperitif-challenge, a moment for interchanges between the region and its service providers (small, medium and very small size companies) to propose new courses of action for sustainable development; a wiki-contract, to combat unsuccessful contracts by creating a resource pool, and finally micro-travel, which consists of organizing immersion sessions for regional civil servants in the premises of their service providers to better understand where the latters’ margins for maneuver lie in terms sustainable development.
Learn more about the project: download the French deliverable
And discover it in photos
