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International Working Group on Ethical Procurement of ICT

  • Published on January 26, 2022

Under the Circular and Fair ICT Pact, the Belgian Federal Institute for Sustainable Development (FISD) works together with ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability to support public buyers to help create better working conditions and protect the rights of workers and communities through ethical purchasing practices.

Under the Circular and Fair ICT Pact, the Belgian Federal Institute for Sustainable Development (FISD) works together with ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability to support public buyers to help create better working conditions and protect the rights of workers and communities through ethical purchasing practices. From previous efforts, we know that a single procuring authority will not be able to shift the market on its own. However, by working together, big buyers of IT committed to ethical procurement, can raise awareness, maximise market power and impact across the entire supply chain.

Keys objectives included to

  • Bring together frontrunners (policy-makers and procurers) regularly,
  • Gather the latest insights on practices and challenges from public authorities as preparatory research that could enable learning, development of new criteria or engagement with market actors,
  • Identify concrete actions to be taken for ethical procurement practice,
  • Enable exchange between procurement and policy perspective,
  • Connect key outputs to other relevant European and international work.

Starting in 2021, the group brought together 27 public procurers and policymakers from 18 European public authorities ranging from local to regional and national levels. To understand their expectations, expertise and ambitions in more detail, a needs and status assessment process was carried out at the beginning of the project. The working group met online across four workshop-style sessions, which focussed on topics such as the use of labels, follow-up in contract management or sharing the latest good practices. The results have been summarised in a final report including a set of recommendations for future work. And in addition, a number of Portraits on Ethical Procurement of ICT have been published as key outputs. These portraits capture procurement approaches, recommendations and lessons learned for individual public authorities. 

The working group will continue in 2022 in a similar format with the aim to exchange and take actions towards a next-generation ethical procurement of IT.

Project start date
01/01/2021
Project end date
31/12/2022

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