Title

The Impact of Professionalization in Public Procurement – evidence from a case study

Authors

• Maria Antonietta Coppola – [email protected]
  Holds a Bachelor Degree and a Master’s Degree in Political Science and International Relations from Sapienza University of Rome. In addition, she holds a second level Master Degree in Public Procurement Management from the University of Rome Tor Vergata.
• Gustavo Piga – [email protected]
  Ph. D. in Economics at Columbia University, Full Professor of Economics at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, where he chairs the International Master in Public Procurement Management. He has chaired the Italian Procurement Agency for Goods and Services, Consip Ltd., between 2002 and 2005. His fields of expertise are public procurement, macroeconomics and public debt management. He is the editor of several books, among which of the Handbook of Procurement, Cambridge University Press, with Nicola Dimitri and Giancarlo Spagnolo and of Revisiting Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Granchildren, MIT Press, with Lorenzo Pecchi. He is member of the Scientific Committee of the Parliamentary Budget Office. Blogs at www.gustavopiga.it

Abstract

The importance of public procurement for achieving value for money in public purchases – thus obtaining important savings in the use of taxpayers’ money and effectiveness in meeting citizen’s demand for public goods of a given quality – is widely recognised, as made clear by the Directive 2014/24 of the European Union and the international legal framework for public procurement at large. But how can these goals be met? Professionalization is a necessary condition and thus represents a key part of the final answer. But what kind of professionalization is really needed? In what environment? With which results? These questions are rarely answered with real life examples.
Taking advantage of a questionnaire-based cohort of individuals that have gone through a process of professionalization in an international environment, this paper expands on its challenges and on the importance of professionalization of the persons working in public procurement-related activities as key to an efficient use of public money.

Keywords

Public procurement; professionalization; advanced training; career progression

 

Citation

Coppola, M. A. & Piga, G. (2019). The Impact of Professionalization in Public Procurement – evidence from a case study -, European Journal of Public Procurement Markets, 2(4), 59-73. https://doi.org/10.54611/NLRE4256