Conference Agenda

Public procurement plays a critical role in driving digital innovation in the public sector, enabling public organisations to act as catalysts for technological and market developments. However, public administration and innovation scholars often criticize traditional public procurement processes, describing them as unsuitable for supporting the acquisition of cutting-edge digital innovation due to rigid structures, lengthy timelines, and a risk-averse nature. In response to this, both scholars and practitioners are increasingly advocating for the adoption of agile procurement approaches, which are expected to enhance flexibility, enable more rapid adaptation to technological advancements, and strengthen the collaboration between public organisations and private sector actors.

Despite their recognised potential, however, the integration of agile approaches in public procurement remains conceptually underdeveloped and limited in practice. To address such as gap, this paper draws on public procurement and supply chain management literature to develop a cross-disciplinary framework for conceptualizing agility in the public procurement of digital innovation. Our theoretical advancement is grounded on the analysis of 154 expert interviews from 54 countries, exploring public procurement practices for smart city technologies and the extent to which agility has been embedded in these practices.

From the analysis of our qualitative dataset, eight underlying principles of agile public procurement have been identified: experimentation, flexibility, centralized coordination, public value creation, cooperation, public leadership, openness, and continuous learning.

These principles connotate agile public procurement and highlight its distinctiveness when compared to both traditional public procurement and agile supply chain management. Consequently, these principles provide a foundation for both academic inquiry and policy reform, offering a structured approach to integrating agility into procurement processes for digital innovation.

Societal issues including climate change, biodiversity loss, rising inequality, pandemics, and geopolitical tensions are challenging countries all around the world to seek for innovative approaches and practices. Countries are more and more in pursue of such practices that would incorporate critical socioeconomic goals into international documents. A big field for introducing new approaches is public procurement. A green public procurement is a specific component of sustainable public procurement (Grandia et al., 2020; Brammer and Walker, 2011). Green public procurement has substantial innovative potential - it can not only change the public services provided and how they are delivered, but it can be understood as an innovation-oriented public procurement policy-making, generating other innovative effects, especially in the regulation field, e.g. environmental protection, mitigating climate change (Rainville, 2017; Krieger & Zipperer, 2022; Kou et al., 2024).

Green public procurement is a part of green transition process towards a new development model that ensures environmentally sustainable and fairer societies. Dimand et al (2023) pointed out that green public procurement is specific in that more than 40% of the total carbon footprint of organisations is associated with procurement, which directly navigates to the fact that green procurement practices are a crucial factor in responding to climate change and other environmental challenges. Meuleman et al. (2021) further argues that sustainable public procurement provides Governments with the opportunity to move beyond procuring only from suppliers that deliver the least expensive products, to prioritising procurement from suppliers that respect human rights and the environment. It can potentially provide a major boost to sustainable development and could be seen by many countries as a strategic priority.

In this paper, we focus on national-level factors and process factors in developing green public procurement capabilities in Slovakia as one of the EU member states. The European Union has paid substantial attention to the issue of green procurement. The European Union Directives create full scope for sustainable and specifically for green public procurement and are also fully transposed into Slovak legislation. The Concept for the Development and Implementation of Green Public Procurement in the Slovak Republic, adopted by the Slovak Government in September 2019, stressed out the minimal use of green public procurement and defined the need to achieve a 50% share of contracts implemented by public authorities by 2030, to ensure green public procurement at least 70% of the total value of public procurement.

Practical implications of our research lie in the importance for all post-transition, transition and developing countries, where public procurement is still mainly about 'buy as cheap as possible', and its broader context is not considered to the extent necessary. Specific research on the functioning of green public procurement as a source of environmental innovation must also reflect on this fundamental dimension.

In the afternoon of September 17th. 2024, several thousand handheld pagers detonated in Lebanon, killing 12 and injuring around 2750 people. The day after, several hundred walkie talkies blew up, killing about 30 and injuring more than 750 people. The weaponization of the Icom handheld radios and the Gold Apollo pagers is an example of how the combination of digitization and outsourcing has opened up dangerous new venues for infiltration, sabotage and attacks through third-party suppliers. Not only is this a challenge for the private companies that may see their operation interrupted and market share plummet, but their customers may face consequences that are far more grim.

The main goal of information security is to secure the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information. Within an organization, hierarchy allows a principal to coordinate and control its agents. The case is different when the public sector partners up with the private sector. Although both sectors will be concerned with information security, it is not given that their foci overlap . If the public and private sector actors value information security differently, this may lead to tension. As private companies are outside the (public) principal’s jurisdiction, the tools of hierarchy no longer apply. Instead, sufficient information security must be brokered through law, international standards or the market. In this context, the coordination of information security meets new challenges.

Insufficient information security within the defence sector is connected to high stakes, since disruption of its operation and services can threaten state security. As a result, it should be expected that information security would have a higher priority within this sector than elsewhere. The defence sector should provide lessons for other public sectors on how critical needs are negotiated between the public and private sector.

Based on agency theory, transaction cost theory, property rights theory and stakeholder theory, this article explores through empirical studies of contracts and interviews with Norwegian Defence Materiel (NDMA) staff and contractors how the NDMA operates to ensure necessary information security in the procurement of defence systems. The article contributes to the discussion of how public administration can meet new technology with adaptation or innovation in governance.

The increasing complexity of societal challenges necessitates more effective and transparent public budgeting, driving a shift towards participatory budgeting (PB) to enhance citizen involvement. While digital platforms offer potential to reduce transaction costs and broaden participation, existing “institutional platforms” often fall short in attractiveness and in fostering genuine collaboration. In contrast, social media’s interactive and networked nature enables broader outreach and real-time communication. This creates a critical research gap: To what extent social networking sites (SNSs) are used to facilitate the PB process, beyond mere information dissemination, and how do their inherent platform dynamics, including issues of content manipulation and user anonymity, impact participation?

This article addresses this gap by investigating the unprecedented case of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on X, de facto administered by businessman Elon Musk, who also owns the platform. This unique configuration enables unparalleled alignment between platform design and administrative goals. Employing discourse and social network analysis, I meticulously trace the lifecycle of budgeting ideas and decisions. The findings reveal that the DOGE discourse on X operates as a highly reconfigured PB process, characterized by a dominance of 'wasteful' spending issues and budget decision announcements. Crucially, direct calls for reporting are infrequent; instead, influential right-wing partisans, whose requests garner significant public approval, trigger rapid budget decisions from DOGE.

For researchers, this article provides an empirical framework for analyzing reshaped PB processes on SNSs, highlighting the critical role of platform ownership, influential users, and aggregated sentiment in shaping governmental responsiveness. For practitioners, it indicates that while SNSs can increase the reach and speed of PB processes, they necessitate careful consideration of inherent biases, representativeness of participation, and the potential for concentrated influence, urging a nuanced approach to leveraging these platforms for citizen engagement and fostering trust in government.