The Needs Assessment (NA) Survey of the Big Buyers Working Together (BBWT) Project officially closed on the 31st of August. The survey was open for three months, giving an opportunity to Public Buyers from Europe to voice their needs and recommendations. In the end, 140 Public Authorities (PA) from EU27 as well as the European Economic Area (EEA) participated in the survey and expressed interest in taking part in the project.

The BBWT team is pleased with such a succesful result, especially with the fact that the interest was shown from a wide range of PAs, including ministries, national and regional agencies, municipalities, scientific institutes, and hospitals. The project team believes that this highlights the importance that public procurement has within the European innovation ecosystem and underlines the desire of PAs to improve public procurement practices and promote their demand for innovative goods and services.

The BBWT team is now involved in the Phase 2 of the NA which includes arranging follow-up, group or bilateral, discussions aimed to finally define the areas of collaboration topics of the Communities of Practices (CoPs), as well as the number and type of participants in each of them. The CoPs will focus on different areas of public procurement, which will be co-defined by the BBWT Secretariat and the participants. During October, the BBWT Secretariat will officially announce the structure of the CoPs, providing more information on the launching of the work for each of them. 

Although the Survey has been officially closed, a certain level of flexibility will be maintained, especially for PAs that are very motivated to participate and those which could provide considerable added value to the Project. PA's may still express their interest in joining BBWT by sending an email to Danko Aleksic, Project Coordinator, at danko.aleksic@eurocities.eu.

Visit the project website to learn how you could shape the Project and how you could benefit from participating in it.