Report
July 18, 2019
What’s in the Mix: Opportunities + challenges for municipal innovation procurement
Brookfield Institute
Purchase innovations and purchase innovatively - challenges and opportunities of public procurement. Authors: Annalise Huynh, Heather Russek, & Michelle Park
Public procurement has always been the way that governments provide essential services to people, by obtaining the goods and services that allow government to function: from computers and software to fire trucks and road salt. Recently, governments are increasingly interested in making procurement faster, more flexible, more inclusive, and easier to understand. They are also interested in enabling a greater diversity of firms to participate in the development of ideas that could help governments solve pressing issues.
As innovation procurement practices emerge and continue to be tested by practitioners inside and outside of government, this research aims to improve the understanding of innovation procurement in the Canadian context, how it has been put into practice, and federal, provincial, and municipal governments work to adopt new approaches for what space there is for experimentation in procurement processes.
What are the opportunities in building innovation procurement practices and what are the challenges?