Green Flags: How open data can throw light on sustainable procurement

This guidance explores how open data about public procurement can help public buyers drive green/sustainable public procurement (GPP) forward. We estimate that governments spend over US$13 trillion every year on public procurement, meaning it could be a very powerful lever to transition to more sustainable economies, inspired by the Sustainable Development Goals and the climate change regulations to implement the Paris Agreement.

There is an important gap still to be filled to track and measure progress in implementing GPP across the whole of the marketplace. This guide aims to begin closing that gap. Put simply, we focus on the ‘green flags’ in government procurement data that can be monitored to track the adoption of GPP. It is based on research focused on the Netherlands, Lithuania and Paraguay and on interviews with global practitioners working to define, qualify, operationalize, and measure Sustainable Public Procurement both in terms of size and scale of purchasing and in terms of performance.