KEINO Academy focused on the development of procurement skills
The KEINO Competence Centre for Sustainable and Innovative Public Procurement, or the KEINO Academy, focused on the wellbeing service counties in 2023. The academy, which ran from May to November, was completed by ten wellbeing services counties from all over Finland.
Managed by development manager Riikka Juuma, Hansel was responsible for the implementation of the KEINO Academy. The entire procurement development services staff were also involved in the implementation process. The wellbeing services counties were only launched at the beginning of 2023, which means that they were still very new organisations when the Academy started. This is why the Academy’s primary goals were networking and offering peer learning opportunities, and new collaboration ideas were indeed created and agreements to continue sharing experiences in future were made. The attendees appreciated the opportunity to receive sparring and support at this stage when many pieces are still up in the air and the wellbeing services counties are subject to a great deal of pressure.
The Academy consisted of three sprint sessions on:
- Strategic leadership
- Analytics and knowledge-based management
- Effectiveness
Learning took place via an e-learning platform and a joint meeting at the end of each sprint. In addition, each participating organisation had a mentor provided by KEINO with whom they could discuss the organisation’s own development challenges. What all the attendees had in common was the need to develop procurement management processes and strategic procurement policies. Feedback from the wellbeing services counties indicated that these needs were well met.
At the last sprint meeting, the attendees had the opportunity to test the impact assessment guide, which covers the effectiveness of procurement from six different perspectives. The attendees used the guide to assess the procurement of senior housing services using the learning café method. The final result was a shared vision of the most effective procurement procedure possible.
In addition to the KEINO Academy, Hansel’s development managers were involved in the planning of themed academies on the management of circular economy procurement and low carbon procurement, which were launched in the autumn. They also acted as sparring partners for the participating organisations regarding the management of procurement and analyses in particular. Both themed academies continued until February 2024.
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