"The Public Procurement Council drives progress towards better public procurement"

Just before Christmas, Nina Lundgren was elected as the new chair of the Public Procurement Council. Here, she answers four questions about why she is committed to the task.

Nina Lundgren, you are the new Chair of the Public Market Council. How does it feel?
It feels fun and exciting and I think we have good dialogues at our meetings, with high ceilings and with many interesting guests. I hope that together we will be able to influence public procurement for the better.

What do you do on a daily basis?
I have been working at IBM for 16 years, currently with responsibility for procurement monitoring and for the framework agreements we have with the public sector. In addition, I act as an advisor on procurement rules, appropriate procurement procedures and general LOU issues. IBM is big and the job involves a lot of contact, which is fun and rewarding. When I am not working, I prefer to spend time with my family.

How do you think the Public Procurement Council benefits?
The public sector procures huge sums of money every year, and we in the industry can help develop public administration, which can bring significant resource savings, more efficient management and well-functioning citizen services. The Council provides a forum for this, where we work together to influence for the better and enable better public business.

Which of the Council's issues do you personally feel most passionate about?
It is difficult to choose a specific issue, but one of them is definitely so-called unsound strategic bidding. For example, 'one-crown tenders', where suppliers dump consultancy hourly rates, sometimes even down to the minus side, i.e. clients are paid to buy consultancy hours from the supplier. In other words, the shortcomings of evaluation models are exploited to win framework contracts with a predetermined strategy of not delivering these consultants.

Another issue I am concerned about is the problem of appeals, the number of them and the time an appeal can take in our courts, which in many cases results in major problems, mainly for contracting entities, but also for us suppliers.