From the managing director

80 years of public procurement

The year 2021 was successful. This was despite the prolonged coronavirus pandemic, which was challenging to us as well. Hansel celebrated an anniversary: The state procurement centre was established in 1941, which was the inception of the now 80-year journey of the agency and later limited liability company. Our long and multiphase journey to our current situation, being a joint procurement unit that serves all the public administration, has been interesting. Unfortunately, we could not invite our cooperation partners and celebrate our story together due to the coronavirus. However, you can read about some of our history in the interview with Merja Leppänen in this annual report. Thank you Merja for 40 years with us!

I am particularly glad that we achieved our growth targets despite the pandemic, which shook many sectors. The use of joint procurement grew by 135 million euros. Our customers also used Hansel’s competitive tendering service and procurement development service more than before. These are a direct result of good cooperation with our customers and suppliers alike. Our committed and competent personnel have done great work, most of which was done from home in the last year.

We’re expecting even more growth in the upcoming year, and we give a warm welcome to new customers. One of the highlights in the coming year is that the new health and social services counties could start using Hansel’s services alongside our current customers. We will be a strong joint procurement unit for all the public administration in future as well.

The significance of corporation responsibility and the related reporting needs are unprecedentedly high for all our customers. The first national public procurement strategy, published a few years ago, has certainly had its impact on this. It is great to work with public procurement now that a large group of us are moving towards the goals we have set together.

As a large procurement unit, I consider our activity in the area of developing public procurement particularly important, because our practical procurement experience has a very solid base. Targets are easy to set, but it is important to think about the kind of targets for public procurement and their competitive tendering it is possible and sensible to reach.

We are working every day to have better practices for public procurement. For a few years, our work has been greatly focused on developing digital tools. It concerns many values such as public procurement that is as effective and responsible as possible, having reduced the need for paperwork. We have built tools for tendering, and hansel.fi, which contains our entire service range, has been revamped to ensure even better user experience. We hope you can use our online service even more easily than before.

The differently themed webinars hosted by Hansel have been a hit, so we will continue to organise them. Even if virtual encounters are easy and effective, I look forward to meeting people in person as well. We are hopeful, and we’re planning a tour of events in different locations around Finland next autumn. See you soon!