Public Procurement of Critical Services - Analysis of Effects on Societal Safety

The ProCritS project has studied the effects of public tendering on the resilience of critical services. Research activities have included studies of competitive tendering within the Norwegian air medical transport system and in security and preparedness services in the city of Oslo and at Norwegian airports, as well as legal analysis of EU and Norwegian law. Results from the project show that for the procurement of critical services, the competition processes themselves can affect service performance in several ways. Among other things, the procurement processes can mean that safety and quality improvements become more stepwise developments following procurement cycles. Linked to society critical functions, the social safety competence of the buyer is also important. In addition to knowledge of law and best practice, the byer must consider what is required from a service based on the role and contributions of a service to one or more society critical sectors. The latter issues can be crucial as the service that is acquired must be developed in relation to its contributions as part of inter-organisational networks, where the overall function of service delivery, for example health, is critical for society. The public procurement rules' prohibition on making "substantial changes" during a contract period has been identified as a challenge for byers, among other things when it comes to the uncertainty characterizing safety as a performance measure. At the same time, the project results point out that the attention of public byers who reach social security objectives with the help of procurement should be less focused on the interpretation of law, and more focused on analysing what provides safety and security in the services they are wanting to buy, so that this becomes possible to describe in their invitations to tender. The project has been a collaboration between safety researchers and legal scholars from the University of Stavanger, University of Oslo and NTNU Social Research. The project includes two Ph.D. projects and brings together an international network of research competence and professional expertise.

This projects collaboration between safety and legal researchers have had a high impact, both for partners involved to understand the safety implications of the legal framework, and for public and private actors on how public procurement law can be understood and applied when procuring services of importance for societal safety. By researching the reach of the possibility to exempt from EU/EAA law undertakings that are contracted to perform society-critical functions, the project has address a crucial element in the demarcation of the EEA-states’ room for manoeuvre. Participation in the project has contribute to increase the acquisition expertise of public organizations, as well as developed how societal safety criteria can be covered and specified in tenders. Following completion of the project, actors involved know more about how procurement processes and tenders can be adapted to better accommodate societal safety as a combined effort across public and private organizations.

The ProCrits project will reveal the effects of tendering on the resilience of critical services. We will, include perspectives of law and economy, and the dynamics of the tendering process for the organizational qualities that are important for resilience. Even though procurement regulation recently was revised to take account of important societal values (environmental issues, social responsibility and worker rights, see Norwegian public procurement act §5), societal safety and inter-organizational collaboration remain absent in procurement regulation. Our project will enhance the understanding of conditions for and consequences of different models of coordination, policy instruments and management tools, and how private actors contribute to societal security. Specifically, the project will generate new in-depth knowledge in 1)transport of critically ill and 2)security and preparedness services. Knowledge generated in the project will be discussed with Norwegian policy makers and industry. Importantly, by combining law studies with specialists on organizational safety, linking empirical research results to legal analysis of international and Norwegian law, the project will develop knowledge with relevance for public procurement legislation and practices across sectors. Further, by including two PhD projects the project will contribute to further development establish a national research collaboration between UiS, UiO and NTNU Social research with a strong international network of research competence expertise within the field. and strengthen research collaboration between UiS, UiO and NTNU Social Research.