Public Procurement Service, Focused Support for Pilot Purchases of Innovative Products Including Overseas Demonstrations

The Public Procurement Service (PPS) will concentrate its budget on pilot purchases of innovative products in three major areas, including overseas demonstration. The aim is to create an innovative public procurement ecosystem through selection and concentration.

According to the PPS's "2024 Basic Plan for Pilot Purchases of Innovative Products" announced on the 3rd, the budget will be focused on expanding overseas demonstration, fostering new growth and new industries, and improving public services that citizens can directly experience.

The budget for pilot purchases of innovative products has increased more than 20-fold, from 2.4 billion KRW when introduced in 2019 to 53 billion KRW this year. The foundational strength to grow the innovative product market has also become stronger accordingly. To support this, the PPS will integrate projects that were previously dispersed and operated by each ministry under its own management starting this year.

By gathering projects and budgets that were separately operated by each ministry, a structure enabling selection and concentration will be created. The PPS plans to significantly improve the conditions that had focused on one-time demand-supply matching to establish the pilot system in the field, thereby enhancing the effectiveness of the pilot purchase system.

With this strategy, the PPS will first expand overseas demonstration of innovative products to open doors to the global market. The overseas demonstration of innovative products involves the PPS purchasing products on a pilot basis and providing them to overseas public institutions, which then provide feedback on product usage reviews (test results) and related certifications to the manufacturing companies and the PPS.

The PPS introduced overseas demonstration last year and conducted related projects with a budget of 1.2 billion KRW. This year, the budget for this project will be increased to 7 billion KRW to diversify the types of overseas demonstration and support contents. Representative cases include testing domestic power generation equipment at overseas power plants and distributing learning aids for children with disabilities in connection with development cooperation projects in developing countries.

Demand for overseas demonstration directly discovered by companies will also be supported. The main point is to support products that help solve various social problems such as tuberculosis eradication in the Philippines and urban traffic congestion in Thailand to have their performance verified locally overseas.

The PPS recruited innovative products to participate in overseas demonstration through a public contest and selected a final 30 products after screening. The results will be announced through the pilot purchase notice on the Innovation Market.

To foster new growth and new industries, pilot purchases in advanced technology fields such as energy, deep science, and bio will be expanded, and investment in research and development (R&D) will be strengthened through matching between companies facing technical difficulties and research institutions. Additionally, traditional core industries based on manufacturing will focus on pilot purchases centered on innovative technologies incorporating digital new technologies, and the scope will be expanded to the materials, parts, and equipment industry to support companies in establishing stable supply chains.

For improving public services that citizens can directly experience, "Our Neighborhood Innovative Products" proposed and discovered directly by citizens will be preferentially provided in the proposer's residential area. Measures will be promoted to give preferential treatment to innovative products designated and pilot-purchased by local governments that solve regional problems through R&D. Safety equipment will be distributed to institutions such as police, coast guard, fire services, and forestry to enhance on-site response capabilities, and support will be provided for the commercialization of safety management technologies that continuously prepare for and monitor risks such as disasters and accidents. These are also included in the plans to improve public services that citizens can directly experience.

In addition, the PPS plans to break down barriers between ministries to reflect policy demands from each ministry in pilot purchases, and to simplify pilot purchase procedures by omitting the demand matching stage for innovative products whose pilot use institutions have already been determined, such as demand-proposed innovative products.

Im Gi-geun, Administrator of the PPS, said, "We expect that the basic plan will serve as a catalyst for technological innovation in the industry and service improvement in the public sector through strategic allocation of the pilot purchase budget for innovative products and efficient project operation." He added, "The PPS will continue to strengthen the scale and role of pilot purchases of innovative products in consultation with financial authorities to realize a dynamic economy and a livelihood economy."