We are proud to announce a new member of our Urban Agenda Public Procurement Partnership: City of Tallinn, which is the largest municipality in Estonia. Its Strategic Management Office activities include:
- coordinating the implementation of the cities strategic goals
- supporting the city government by performing public tasks, organising local life and shaping relevant policies
- operating as a competence centre for support services
This new member joined our Partnership in March 2025. Contact person is
Grethe Ojamäe,
Public Procurement Project Manager within the Purchasing & Procurement Centre.
We have interviewed Grethe and asked her to introduce her city and its role in our Partnership by answering below questions:
Why the City of Tallinn applied for joining the UA Public Procurement Partnership?
We aim to make the City of Tallinn a smart buyer, a reliable partner for other stakeholders and is transparent in its actions. The city contributes to the well-being of society and its citizens. Through public procurement we aim to achieve sustainable development objectives, development of climate and green policies, sustainable operations and influence the choices and future activities of economic operators guiding them towards innovative solutions.
In addition, we are really looking forward to exchanging best practices and networking within the partnership, contributing to development and implementation of different tools and strategies to meet strategic goals. Green public procurement (GPP) is the most evolved out of strategic procurements as Tallinn has a Project Manager for GPP in our team who is coordinating our participation in the ChemClimCircle project. Tallinn is also building a new Circular Economy Center where the concept is wider than just providing waste station services. The services as well as the building itself are focusing on circular economy and sustainability. Therefore, we are looking forward to bringing social and innovative aspects in public procurement up to speed in the near future.
What are the challenges the City of Tallinn faces in terms of Innovative and Responsible Public Procurement?
The main challenges for contracting authorities - when adapting new strategies or criteria - has always been the question of how to merge social or innovative aspects into public procurements in a way that is verifiable. The City of Tallinn faces the same challenge. Strategic public procurement requires thorough planning, including stakeholder analysis. It demands resources as well as readiness for the possibility of failure in terms of both time and financial resources. Therefore, it is essential to enhance the knowledge and develop the skills of employees involved in public procurement for conducting strategic procurements. It is also important to recognise that public procurement is not merely a tool for purchasing goods or ordering services, but when thoughtfully and skilfully executed, it has a significantly broader impact.
What is the added value of the Partnership for the City of Tallinn?
We wish to expand our network in the field of public procurement and want to collaborate with the members of the UAPP partnership. In the past, the emphasis was mainly on GPP, but now the aim is to achieve more strategic objectives. We would like to gain knowledge as well as give input to contribute and promote the value of strategic public procurement. The addressed topics within the partnership are also relevant for us regarding the preparation of our city action plan. Therefore, we hope to gain relevant input for the key lines of actions that includes strategic aspects of centralising public procurements, as well as general development of centralisation and management of public procurements (consultancy, training, establishing effective procurement and purchasing policies, etc.), while taking the leading PP trends and developments into consideration. We also hope to gain feedback from other points of view to our actions and practices so far and we are more than happy to share our knowledge.
In 2023, Tallinn received the European Green Capital Award. Also, Estonia was recognized as Innovation Champion at CES 2025 and the Tallinnovation concept was established by Tallinn Strategic Management Office to promote innovation. These awards indicates we indeed have many prerequisites to implement innovation, but we need to start applying the relevant strategies and criteria to public procurement to maximize full potential of development in all areas.
If you would like to know more about the Tallinnovation concept to develop smart city solutions in the City of Tallinn,
please visit the Tallinnovation website.
If you would like to contact Grethe Ojamäe directly, please send her an e-mail: Grethe.Ojamae@tallinnlv.ee