Effective procurement requires that all staff in an organisation have access to easy-to-use policies and procedures. It is not enough to make national guidelines and regulations or European directives available, each public body is obliged to have an in-house set of policies and procedures which outline the organisation’s goals and targets for implementing and managing effective procurement.

The procurement policy should address at a minimum:

• The Senior Management commitment to procurement
• The process for monitoring and reporting on compliance
• The authority levels to be complied with in relation to decisions ensuring full separation of duties
• Encapsulate the delivery of the corporate procurement plan
• Detail the organisation’s policy on innovation, accessibility, environment and social inclusion

The procurement procedures should include the following:

• Outline the process for initiation of procurement linked to budgets and budget holders
• Lay down the internal thresholds for quotations
• Detail the procedures to be used for quotations and national and EU value tenders
• Describe the operation of each specific procedure to be employed
• Detail the rules to be applied for derogations from procurement (e.g. sole source, urgency, etc.)
• Detail the systems to be linked to internal ERP systems and external (eTenders, SIMAP, TED)
• Prescribe the approval and reporting systems to be complied with