40 civil servants from 11 territorial governmental offices of Kyiv region have started the online training on the Green Public Procurement (GPP) basics.
The educational Ukrainian-Slovak project was developed to teach civil servants, responsible for tender procedures, on how to use principles and benefits of “ecological procurement”.
The training course is available on the online platform http://chamilo.sccd-sk.org/.
“This is an affordable and very meaningful training program designed to raise awareness among public servants about the green procurement principle” said Igor Comendo, Director of NGO GoLOCAL.
The course consists of 3 lecture modules, each one designed for 1 week of online training. At the end of each module the course attendant is offered to complete the test to examine the knowledge gained during the week.
The course’s content:
Module 1 – Green Procurement Policy, Principles and Methods.
The module covers the following topics:
- Concepts: “Public Procurement”, “product life cycle”;
- Definition of “responsible consumption” as one of the United Nations global goals of sustainable development;
- Ukraine’s commitments under the Association Agreement with the EU;
- Legislative consolidation of environmental values and principles of sustainable consumption and production.
Module 2 – Selection Criteria.
This module compares two approaches to the selection of works / goods / services:
- The traditional approach, based mostly on price and quality criteria;
- The GPP approach – which includes not only the price criterion but requirements for environmental protection, human health and other qualification criteria as well.
Module 3 – Option Criteria.
The module describes in detail the “product life cycle” concept. The focus is made on the fact that when choosing products it is necessary to consider not only the initial purchase price of the goods but also all future costs, in particular:
- Purchase price and all related costs (delivery, installation, adjustment, etc.); operating expenses (consumption of energy or water resources, fuel, spare parts and maintenance);
- Warranty period and operating life specified in the manufacturer’s warranties.
Why civil servants?
The creation of this training program for civil servants has a very simple reasoning – by buying an enormous amount of office supplies, detergents, textiles, furniture, construction materials as well as by ordering cleaning and catering services, state agencies become the largest customers of services and products in the country.
Therefore, the “green procurement” criterion implemented by civil servants can, on the one hand, create a massive positive effect on the environment and public health. On the other hand, it will demonstrate the demand for products with high environmental performance.
Kyiv Region was chosen as a pilot region by a strong reason. A survey conducted by GoLOCAL experts has shown that the civil servants of the Kyiv region state institutions do not know much about the environmental procurement mechanism. In their procurement practice they still use conservative and old-fashioned criteria such as cost savings and prior experience with the contractor. The more is the pity we are talking about the most developed region of Ukraine.
40 participants are the first group of civil servants who have shown interest in learning GPP basics and have registered for the online training. We expect in the nearest future the program to be publicly available for all interested regardless the location and place of work.
