How do we get more suppliers to take part in public procurements? We discussed that in Almedalen.

The public sector is one of Sweden's very largest markets. Every year, goods and services worth over SEK 1,100 billion are purchased with taxpayer money. Yet the number of tenders per procurement is falling. More companies are turning away from public-sector business – not because the opportunities aren't there, but because the barriers feel too high.

At Almedalen, Tendium teamed up with Dagens Industri to bring together a panel with Minister for Civil Affairs Erik Slottner, Ellen Hausel-Heldahl from the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise, Yashar Moradbakhti from Lingio, and Hannes Dernehl from Tendium, to tackle the question: how do we build a modern public market where the best companies with the best solutions actually want to compete?

Complicated processes scare off the right suppliers

The panel broadly agreed on what's driving companies away. Ellen Hausel-Heldahl put it into words with an example that sticks: 84 pages of procurement documents just to buy fruit baskets for staff. Who has the energy to take on that burden?

Hannes Dernehl confirmed the picture. Many companies say they're planning to stop selling to the public sector – not because they lack the capacity, but because the process is too complicated and too binary. B2B is seen as simpler, so many suppliers choose to focus there instead.

On top of that is a systemic problem with requirement specifications that are outdated, copy-pasted from old documents, or drawn so narrowly that in practice only one supplier can take part. Roughly 20 per cent of companies see procurements as rigged from the start, according to surveys by the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise.

Procuring well is hard – and buyers need to get better at it

The panel also agreed that it's resource-intensive and challenging for public organisations to run good procurements.

Yashar Moradbakhti described how many of Lingio's customers, often municipalities and regions, struggle to find the resources needed for good procurements – especially smaller municipalities that may lack resources, expertise, and experience alike.

Erik Slottner agreed and noted that more small organisations need to join forces and run joint procurements. He talked about ongoing efforts to make this easier – the National Procurement Services function is being moved to the Procurement Agency, with hopes it will play a bigger role supporting smaller buyers.

Ellen Hausel-Heldahl said the public sector needs better access to data to analyse and draw conclusions about how procurements are best designed. A digitalised, data-driven purchasing process with category management would raise the quality of public purchasing.

AI is a major opportunity for both buyers and suppliers

Everyone on the panel agreed: AI has an important role to play in strengthening public procurement. Ellen Hausel-Heldahl painted a picture of a future where AI drafts tenders, AI evaluates them, and humans make the final decisions.

Hannes Dernehl made it concrete: if every supplier could manage to take part in two procurements instead of one, thanks to AI support and better procurements, competition would change dramatically.

While the panel agreed the public sector still has some way to go to reach that future, AI is already playing an active role in lowering the barriers for suppliers to take part. Yashar Moradbakhti shared how they use Tendium and how it already makes life much easier when taking part in procurements.

It's time to raise the status – a precondition for everything else

A perhaps unexpectedly strong theme was the question of status. Hannes Dernehl said flatly that procurement has a bad reputation – possibly undeserved. Saying you work in procurement rarely sparks enthusiasm. But we're talking about SEK 1,100 billion in taxpayer money. It's hard to find anything more important to get right.

The public market is too big and too important to be handled half-heartedly. That was the Almedalen panel's clearest message – and a reminder that change is possible, but requires every party to take responsibility.

You can watch the recording of the panel discussion here.