The Swedish public procurement system is well regulated and developed and can also be very hard to understand. The public sector annually carries out public procurements to a large amount of money, and thus constitutes a large part of Sweden’s total GDP. The value of the purchases covered by the procurement acts was estimated at approximately SEK 782 billion in 2018. The purpose of public procurement is to guarantee competition on equal terms, contribute to the efficient use of society's resources and taxpayers' money, while promoting innovative solutions, and have environmental considerations in mind. The purpose of this paper is to examine what the procurement process looks like at one of Sweden's largest authorities, the Swedish Transport Administration (Trafikverket) and if improvements should be made. Questions about how tenders are received and evaluated, about what the market looks like, about what improvements that are desired and about what is good about the procurement process. These questions linked to a trust-based governing will be answered and discussed. The main conclusion that are made in this paper is that the Swedish procurement process require some improvements, but the hard thing is to decide what should be improved. My conclusion is that tender evaluation and the review process are areas that needs the most improvement from the empirical data that I have collected, but other areas came to discussion as well. A discussion regarding the trust-based governing is also included in the conclusion.

Approximately, digital transformation in public sector is procured for an amount of 59 billion Swedish crowns, according to Konkurrensverket. But despite this, the procurement process is not that effective, which may question the benefits of the investment being made. The Swedish Government has a goal to be the best in the world to utilize the opportunities that digitalization gives to the public sector, but according to Ekonomistyrningsverket, this goal is not considered to be fulfilled since there are some shortcomings in the area. Some argue that public procurement of innovation can contribute to a solution that is better suited to public needs, which is one of the reasons that the agency of innovation Vinnova was commissioned by the government to promote public procurement of innovation in the public sector. The procurement process is governed by laws and therefore the communication between customer and supplier is limited as no supplier are allowed to have competitive advantages in the procurement. This means that the requirement specification is important for public sector to fill their needs, but it claims that the process of requirements can be very complicated. The purpose of the study is to deepen the knowledge of procurement as an aspect to digitalize in an innovative way. This will be done by identifying the challenges and opportunities that exists in the procurement process. The study is conducted through an qualitative method and a literature study and interviews are used to collect data. Initially, the area is explored in a broader perspective with an exploratory approach and the collected material are further specified into a more specific area where a more focused approach is used. The results of the study indicate that there are both challenges and opportunities in the procurement process. The challenges that were identified concern the areas; specification of requirements, limits with the Public Procurement Act (PPA), the concept & meaning of public procurement of innovation and the competence of the Swedish innovation agency. Furthermore, the possibilities that were identified concern the areas; the competence of the Swedish innovation agency, specification of requirements, PPA & new way of working with the procurement process and the trend of being innovative. / Enligt Konkurrensverket upphandlas digitalisering inom offentlig sektor till ett belopp av 59 miljarder kronor. Trots detta är processen för upphandlingen inte särskilt effektiv vilket gör att nyttan av de investeringar som görs ifrågasätts. Sveriges regering har som mål att bli bäst i världen på att nyttja de möjligheter som digitaliseringen kan ge till den offentliga sektorn, men eftersom det fortfarande förekommer brister inom området anser Ekonomistyrningsverket att målet inte är uppfyllt. Många hävdar att innovationsupphandling kan bidra med lösningar som är bättre anpassad till det offentliga behovet vilket är en av anledningarna till att innovationsmyndigheten Vinnova fick i uppdrag av regeringen att främja innovation genom innovationsupphandlingar i offentlig sektor. Upphandlingsprocessen är styrd av lagar vilket bidrar till att kommunikationen blir begränsad mellan aktörerna då ingen leverantör ska få konkurrensfördelar i upphandlingen. Detta gör att kravspecifikationen är viktig för att offentliga verksamheter ska få det som efterfrågas, dock hävdas det att processen att identifiera behov samt formulera krav kan vara mycket komplicerad. Syftet med studien är att fördjupa förståelsen medupphandling som utgångspunkt för att kunna digitalisera på ett innovativt sätt genom att identifiera utmaningar och möjligheter som finns i upphandlingsprocessen. Studien utförs genom en kvalitativ metod där en litteraturstudie, intervjuer och en enkätundersökning utförs för att samla in data. Till en början undersöks området i ett bredare perspektiv med en utforskande ansats för att sedan använda det insamlade materialet till att specificera området ytterligare där en mer fokuserad ansats används. Studiens resultat visar på att det finns både utmaningar och möjligheter i upphandlingsprocessen där utmaningarna som identifierats rör områdena; kravspecifikation, begränsning med lagen om offentlig upphandling (LOU), begreppet & innebörden av innovationsupphandling samt innovationsmyndighetens kompetens. Vidare rör möjligheterna som identifierats områdena; Upphandlingsmyndigheten kompetens, kravspecifikation, LOU & nya arbetssätt kring upphandlingsprocessen samt trenden att vara innovativ.