Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Tamlyn Shimizu: Welcome to Smart in the city, the BABLE podcast, where we bring together top actors in the smart city arena, sparking dialogues and interactions around the stakeholders and themes most prevalent for today's citizens and tomorrow's generations.
[00:00:21] Tamlyn Shimizu: I am your host, Tamlyn Shimizu, and I hope you will enjoy this episode and gain knowledge and connections to accelerate the change for a better urban life.
[00:00:31] Tamlyn Shimizu: Smart in the city is brought to you by BABLE Smart cities. We enable processes from research and strategy development to co creation and implementation. To learn more about us, please visit the BABLE platform at BABLE Smartcities EU.
[00:00:46] Tamlyn Shimizu: So we are sitting in the wonderful city of Rotterdam right now for this edition of the Urban Future Conference. I am once again for the third year in a row, I'm glad to be a media partner of this wonderful event and getting the chance to talk to so many of the amazing speakers. So also, a big thank you to Urban Future for allowing this to happen.
And the topic today is near and dear to my heart. But at the same time, let's say I think everyone has a bit of a love hate relationship with it, if you can guess what it is. Yes, indeed, it is innovative procurement.
So with me today, I actually just came from your session that you had together with Alex, our CEO, around procurement. So I already got a little bit of your insights from it, but I'm really excited to dig in a bit more. So with me today is Valentina Skippers, coordinator of urban agenda partnership on innovative and responsible public procurement at the city of Harlem, Netherlands, as well as the chair of working group Euro Cities in public procurement. Welcome, Valentina.
[00:01:49] Valentina Schippers: Thank you very much, Tamlyn. It's an honor to be together with you.
[00:01:53] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, always lovely to speak to you in general, but the first time we get to do it on the podcast. So I'm really excited to use this forum to get all of your knowledge out.
Let's say we do like to start off the podcast with a little bit of a teaser to get warmed up. It's actually quite cold in this room. We're both like huddled up a little bit.
It's a cold one. I'm not sure why. So to get warmed up and in this period of things, I have a little teaser question for you. That question is, imagine that the city is like your favorite dish to cook.
If public procurement were an ingredient, which ingredient would it be?
[00:02:35] Valentina Schippers: I really like sweets, so I would choose a wonderful cake with the fruits.
And I would say procurement, I would describe as a flower of this cake because it keeps all ingredients together and it makes the cake taste very, very good. Which is the main goal of the cake, to be tasty.
[00:03:02] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, that's an interesting one. I really didn't know it direction you were going to go with this question, but you answered it perfectly, because procurement is really, you can't have all the ingredients come together without the flour, basically. So good answer. More creative than I anticipated. So good.
Before we dig into the content and the topic more, I really want to give the audience a bit of insight into who you are as a person. I think you're a lovely person. We've had many conversations, and your background is also quite interesting. Please tell the listeners on who you are. Where did you come from? How did you come into this role in procurement?
[00:03:47] Valentina Schippers: In Harlem, I'm working already more than 20 years at the public authority, and I did different things from different perspectives, and I see how important strategic public procurement is because it can help cities and regions and member states and other public authorities to address different challenges they're dealing with, such as social, environmental, economic and so on.
[00:04:20] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, very good. Tell me a little bit more about your background, like where are you originally from?
What topics did you study? How did you get into it?
[00:04:32] Valentina Schippers: Yes, I was born in Minsk and I studied in Germany, and now I live more than 20 years in the Netherlands. And all these experiences with different languages, different cultures, different backgrounds helped me to see not only what is outside, but also what is the meaning and what is inside.
What makes it very special that you cannot see, maybe from first sight.
[00:05:15] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, absolutely.
I want to learn a little bit more about your current work as the coordinator of the Urban Agenda partnership on innovative and responsible public procurement. It's a mouthful to say that's the only time I'll say it the full way through. Now, again with the urban agenda, what is your role? What is the goals of the urban agenda? What are you doing with that whole program?
[00:05:39] Valentina Schippers: Yes, thank you for this interesting question.
This urban agenda partnership is initiative of European Commission, and it's a network of cities, regions, member states, expert organizations, commission, and all the partners, all the members are very eager to share information and knowledge to do advocacy together. And we are all very passionate about using public procurement as a strategic tool.
[00:06:17] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, absolutely. And so what does it look like? I guess day to day with the urban agenda partnership? What are the projects that you're driving? What is the, what are the main goals and ambitions that you're driving on a continual basis?
[00:06:34] Valentina Schippers: Yes, we working with an action plan. And just to tell you about a few actions, we are working on currently. One of them is position paper that finalized just a few weeks ago and in there will be elections, EU elections this year. And it's very important that the public procurement as a strategic tool still stays in the focus of commission also in the next period because it's an important vehicle for all public authorities.
It's a flower in the cake.
It's really important. Another action is capacity, capacity building on how to achieve Ukraine deal goals and for example how recover economy using procurement and innovation.
[00:07:42] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, very good. Yeah. Really interesting stuff to dive a bit more into procurement because I know you've worked on the topic for some time now.
To start us off, I want to ask what is the one thing that people just get wrong about procurement?
[00:07:58] Valentina Schippers: Unfortunately, it's not only one thing, two things.
[00:08:03] Tamlyn Shimizu: One of the biggest things. Yeah.
[00:08:08] Valentina Schippers: The main thing I hear about procurement that it's something from administrative department. It's boring, complicated and so on and so on. But I not totally agree with that.
[00:08:30] Tamlyn Shimizu: You don't agree that it's complicated?
[00:08:34] Valentina Schippers: One of the actions of urban agenda partnership is to showcase how you can make the process of procurement from the complex to more feasible.
And we developed an e learning module and one of the parts of e learning model is about legal framework of procurement of innovation. And then complex and long processes are described in the form of infographic. So it's very accessible, very easy to use and it takes this fear a way that shouldn't be complicated or difficult or heavy.
[00:09:22] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, very good. I think simplifying these historically, I guess complex topics is one of the most important things I think we can do when we work with cities. As cities, we need to really think how can we simplify this? And I think that's a really good example of that. So I want to also get a little bit more into if you can explain how public procurement can be strategically utilized to address maybe social challenges.
Do you have any examples there?
[00:09:57] Valentina Schippers: Yes.
For example, you could use public procurement in order to create new jobs and internships for people with a distance to labour market.
You can also stress gender egality and to improve the egality compared to the current situation.
You can also do some impact on reintegration or helping refugees to learn language and to become a part of the environment and society and also to learn more about how does it work in certain countries.
[00:10:50] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, really good examples.
From your experience, you've seen many, many case studies of probably public authorities using procurement in poor ways maybe, and also some really good best practices as well that you thought, wow, those are what we should be doing in procurement and we need to get those lessons out there to more cities. So I'm wondering from your experience, what are the most effective strategies public authorities are using? You think that you've seen in your personal experience?
[00:11:26] Valentina Schippers: I would like to mention social return on investment.
I will explain very shortly.
So it means that public authority saying that four or 5% of the total procurement amount the winning company should use to create new jobs and internships for refugees or people who are unemployed. And we see this at cost time to introduce this strategy in the public authority. But if it works, you can really make impact with this strategy.
[00:12:22] Tamlyn Shimizu: And what about in relation to sustainability?
How are you seeing cities really, I guess breaking down those barriers, really achieving a lot with procurement in terms of sustainability goals?
[00:12:38] Valentina Schippers: Yes.
If you formulate your procurement need as a challenge, instead of asking for, let's say, lamps and preferably from a certain supplier, you can also ask, we need lights in our buildings and you still can get offer from the supplier of their I lamps. But maybe there will be some other more sustainable solutions. For example, leasing of lamps or create more light in the buildings through some investigations or some maintenance that will allow you to use less lamps, or maybe there will be even very interesting innovative solution that could help you to have enough lights in the building.
[00:13:39] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, exactly. I think with our work at BABLE, we consistently see that because we work in really this innovation scope, that what's happening so frequently and so many companies come to us and tell us this on a daily basis, that everything, their startup, for example, or scale up, or usually a relatively young company, and they're saying, okay, this city is interested, they need what my product has. And we've determined that. But now they're going to go into procurement and it's going to take like a year or more to actually finish procurement. What are you seeing as the main strategies to speed up that process for the smaller companies?
[00:14:24] Valentina Schippers: For the smaller companies, yes, they're struggling a lot. I think what public authority should do more than we do now is to stay in conversation with the market parties and also using kind of thermometer to see what they need to do their work and to deliver innovative and good solutions. One of them could be, for example, to not over ask in their public procurement procedures, because they're big companies, they have their own staff and sometimes even departments who are doing nothing else, writing tenders of procurement documents and small and medium enterprises and startups, they do not have that stuff. So it's sometimes not feasible for them to join. So this more simplicity in what you are asking as a public authority is very important. And another thing is also you could also choose to split your procurement in smaller lots and would allow in this way also to participate for small and medium enterprises.
[00:15:53] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, really good tips there. I think we need to be looking at ways that we can include smaller companies in the discussion and getting them hooked up with the needs of cities.
So what do you think are the most common obstacles that public authorities are facing? So, for example, if they want to improve their procurement process, what obstacles are they facing to be able to do that?
[00:16:24] Valentina Schippers: I think it starts with a commitment of local politicians or politicians, managers, directors, because if they understand the importance of public procurement as a strategic tool, it helps a lot.
Another also more behavior thing in organization is to create possibility to have ambassadors for sustainable, green, circular, climate adaptive, social responsible procurement. And it help organization people in organization to understand how important it is, just providing examples, just to describe it as an exciting instrument.
[00:17:18] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah. Do you think there's still a large percentage of people who don't actually understand the power of procurement within local government?
[00:17:26] Valentina Schippers: Unfortunately, a lot on different levels, from decision makers to procurers and everything in between. And you asked me about obstacles, but one of the important obstacles is also maybe especially for small and medium cities, towns in Europe, is that the people who are doing procurement, they have so high workload that they don't even have time often to think about more strategic use of it to put more sustainability and social etcetera criteria. They are happy and sometimes they unfortunately copy paste from their previous procurement. So this is issue. Unfortunately, I had a random question.
[00:18:28] Tamlyn Shimizu: When you said copy and paste, I was thinking, are people using AI now to write a lot of this too? Do you know about any experiences there?
[00:18:39] Valentina Schippers: Not on the large scale, more like funny experimentation. But actually, if public authorities would like maybe to copy paste from their best practices, they search for them in their networks and try to reuse it. And there is also a lot of data and e learning models and resource data banks with interesting information they could use.
[00:19:16] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, cool.
Yeah, I'm just using chat GPT so much. I think everyone is starting to use it so much in their daily work. So I can imagine it has quite some applications in procurement, although I think a lot of implications as well that we have to be careful of. Of course.
[00:19:35] Valentina Schippers: So.
[00:19:38] Tamlyn Shimizu: Basically, I want to look a little bit at the impact, because I think you brought to the table that there's a lot of people who still don't understand the impact that utilizing procurement as a tool can have. On the city and the lives in the ecosystem overall. I'm wondering if you can, if I can ask you, what do you think is really the impact?
How do we measure the impact? How can we prove the impact of this?
[00:20:11] Valentina Schippers: Yes, when you ask about the impact, it's a bit tricky, because you, of course, can use different cap AIs. For example, for social responsible public procurement, you could say, okay, I can count number of jobs that have been created using social responsible public procurement as a strategic tool.
It would be true. And then you could also say, okay, percentage of people who return to the working process even after internship or this job.
But what you do not measure is the happiness of the people. People, when you make a difference by creating jobs. So happiness of the. Of children who see that their parents are not worried anymore about how to pay bills, how to pay most important things for them. The happiness of the people who are, instead of sitting at home, disabled people, they can participate and they have colleagues, they have nice conversation, they have fun in front of coffee machines while talking about how was the last weekend. So I think when we are talking about impact, we are talking about these numbers and percentages. But I would highly encourage people also to think about happiness, which is also important impact for people.
[00:22:04] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, of course. The quantitative, with the qualitative, I think is very important.
What about sustainability?
Calculate the sustainable impact, the CO2 reduced. How can we calculate really the impact on our environment?
[00:22:21] Valentina Schippers: Regarding the measurement, there are a lot of tools and methods how to calculate it from other side. It's only one insight.
You can also look at other aspects and also other measurements, because carbon emissions, for example, carbon is only one of the better gases. And there are a lot of more like metan and so on.
And why to not count or measure it as well. So I think a lot of public authorities struggling with what to use. I think the truth is important to choose a tool or method that suits to your public authority and also to your capacity. You have to measure, because it also costs time to measure or to analyze and to monitor the data.
And there is a lot of out there, European Commission do a lot and publish also different kinds of possibilities, measurements. And I hope that will be more uniform also in the future. Because nowadays some authorities do not measure this at all. And some of them are very advanced.
Yeah, it's difficult to compare or they use different methods or different tools.
[00:24:08] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, I'm just thinking that it would be a really useful tool for getting buy in from politicians, from other people that maybe are a little bit more skeptical of really spending the time and energy to look at it and to use it as a strategical tool that if you see the numbers and you show the impact, then it could really get buy in from the people you need to get buy in and also educate more. So that's why I really wanted to ask about how can we really show the impact. Right?
[00:24:40] Valentina Schippers: Yes, effects are good, of course, but I think also telling a story, it could help them to understand how important it is. And the stories, there are a lot of. And if you hear the story, you feel that it has an angle also with your own life and with your own story, then you probably will feel more connected to it.
[00:25:09] Tamlyn Shimizu: Do you have one story that really you've already told a couple. I know, but I don't know if you have another story that really hits home or really close to your heart that you think a lot of people might relate to.
[00:25:22] Valentina Schippers: Yes, I have a story that I would like to share. I know this person.
And he was studying and during his study he became ill, he didn't felt well and he even had to go to the hospital and they discovered he had very chronic disease and he couldn't finish his study anymore. So he was at home, he went back to his parents place and he couldn't work. And the doctor said, yeah, probably you will never be able to work or to study in the future at all. And in the first month a lot of student friends visited him and it was very nice.
But after the time flew away.
After a year, nobody called, nobody came. So he became also quite lonely person. And without friends, the world became very, very small for him as well. And then the possibility occurred to start the work. And doctor said, I don't expect it's possible more than 4 hours a week.
And when this person was started, it was also one of the possibilities through procurement strategic tool as well. And he came and he had colleagues around him and he felt his.
He is needed again. So he told me he feel happy and he is very, very thankful that he can join this working process again to be part of the community.
And then after a few months he told me, yes, I would like to work more hours. So he started to work more.
He could achieve 12 hours a week without.
He started to feel his better as well. So his health was improved as well because of his happiness.
So instead of 4 hours maximum, he worked 12 hours a week, which is great and yeah, not lonely anymore and a happy person.
[00:28:15] Tamlyn Shimizu: Good, good. I'm really glad to hear that and thanks for so much for telling that story.
To play devil's advocate a little bit. Now, critics sometimes might argue that socially responsible or sustainable procurement can lead to higher costs. Possibly, maybe it takes more time, increasing complexity.
How do you respond to concerns that prioritizing these values might place an undue financial burden on public authority, which could potentially limit their ability to deliver essential services, for example?
[00:28:52] Valentina Schippers: Yes, it does not need to be more expensive. And if you take, for example, social return on investment, the companies who win the tender, they have to realize all those internships and additional working places within the procurement budget.
So it means that it's not 100% of the amount plus four or 5%, but this four or 5% they have to spend to create new jobs and internships is included in the total procurement amount. So it means that it's not more expensive than you should think.
[00:29:40] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah. So it's really, in practice, it's really not more expensive, and then in practice it also is having a higher return.
Right. Would be your argument. Good.
So before we go into our segment, we talked a lot about procurement, but we didn't talk a lot about your city. And so I want to ask you if you can tell us anything else about Harlem, like what is the main challenge, you think in your city or. Main challenge is in your city.
Can you elaborate a bit more about it?
[00:30:13] Valentina Schippers: Yes.
Our challenges are energy transition, sustainable mobility.
It's also transition to circular economy to be more social and to make more impact.
[00:30:32] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, absolutely. And Haarlem, just so people know, right, is outside of Amsterdam. So the smaller kind of city from Amsterdam. How is your relation with Amsterdam? Can you set the scene a little bit there?
[00:30:48] Valentina Schippers: Yes. City of Haarlem is part of metropolis region of Amsterdam, and metropolis region of Amsterdam counts 35 organizations, 32 cities and towns around Amsterdam, two provinces and one public transport company. And altogether we have also joint strategy also regarding circularity and sustainability.
And the city of Haarlem, it's mid sized city, but it's also capital of the province of North Holland. So not everyone knows that. Outside of Netherlands, of course, but we play a central role and also frontrunner and trying to be a good example for other cities.
[00:31:44] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, wonderful. I've actually been a couple times, I think, to Harlem, and I really, really enjoyed it.
But before we go into our segment and our last question, I like to give you the open floor because I feel I can ask you many questions, but there's oftentimes things that I miss and things that you think maybe the audience really should know that we didn't yet talk about. Do you have anything that you want the listeners to know.
[00:32:10] Valentina Schippers: Yes, sure. Thank you so much.
I would like also to mention that how important, not only procurement itself, but also prep procurement market consultations because you know then the market, what you know what you can ask and it's, this is the win situation for the companies because they know more details and they know how to respond and win situation for the municipalities because you know what to ask, how to ask and you know what is out there.
And also after procurement is very, very important. And I mean contract management and monitoring, because you could do wonderful precurement procurement itself. But if you never monitor or not look after your contracts and what you were promised, indeed created or achieved, then it doesn't make any sense.
[00:33:27] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, very good words and good reminders as well. So with that, we're going to move to a segment. It's a relatively new segment and it's called top or flop.
Top or flop. Respond quickly with your positive or negative review on a variety of topics.
So I ask you, top or flop? And we'll just go through them quickly and then at the end, if you want to describe or explain anything, you can. Okay, are you ready?
[00:34:00] Valentina Schippers: Yes. Yes, I am.
[00:34:02] Tamlyn Shimizu: Okay, good. Okay. Top or flop. Relying solely on biking for transportation around Harlem.
Adopting AI driven procurement systems for better efficiency.
Entering into long term contracts exclusively with suppliers who meet high sustainability standards, allowing communities members to have a say in procurement decisions.
Implementing policies that give preference to local vendors.
Flop urban future conference.
Good, good. I realized I asked you questions that I thought you would mostly say top two, but you did have one flop, which was implementing policies that get preference to local vendors. So you think, and this is a topic actually that's quite interesting as well, around international vendors versus local vendors. How do you think that authorities should handle this topic?
[00:35:04] Valentina Schippers: Yeah, confirm the procurement law. It's not allowed to do discrimination. And if you just say in your procurement documents that you would like to have local, it's not allowed, actually.
Of course, it's important to boost local economy and to provide possibilities to local companies to grow and to achieve more.
But there are also, within the procurement law, enough possibilities to do that.
Not for the focus on local, but smaller media enterprises could be stimulated, as I mentioned earlier, by splitting of the procurement in the smaller lots. Just, you could also gain extra points for less transportation or quicker service that could be delivered by small medium prices or local small and medium enterprises.
[00:36:25] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, very good. And of course, urban future conference is a top.
[00:36:31] Valentina Schippers: I agree with you.
[00:36:32] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, it's one of my favorites. So now we get to our final question. And it is the question we ask every single guest, and it is to you, what is a smart city?
[00:36:44] Valentina Schippers: Smart city is a clever and smart way of using of your resources, of your opportunities and possibilities.
[00:36:56] Tamlyn Shimizu: Very good and very concise. I love it. So thank you so much, Valentina, for coming on. It's been a pleasure to speak to you. I really, really appreciate your time and your expertise on the topic. So thank you so much.
[00:37:07] Valentina Schippers: Thank you very much, Emily. It was a pleasure to be here today.
[00:37:10] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:37:11] Valentina Schippers: Thank you for listening.
[00:37:12] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, absolutely. And thanks also again, we said we love Urban Future. Thanks to urban feature and yeah, thanks for listening to all of our listeners. Don't forget you can always create a free account on BABLE dash smartcities EU. You can find out more about smart city projects, solutions, implementations and more. So thank you very much.
[00:37:32] Tamlyn Shimizu: Thank you all for listening.
[00:37:33] Tamlyn Shimizu: I'll see you at the next stop on the journey to a better urban life.
