LCC criteria for procurement of ITC goods and services

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Life-cycle costing (LCC) was intended to be one of the core tools of the reform of EU Public Procurement law from 2014 and constitutes the basis for implementing life-cycle thinking in public procurement. Although the Public Sector Directive encourages national governments to foster the use of sustainable public procurement, including through the use of LCC, best practice still consists of situations of voluntary compliance, rather than generalized implementation of LCC. Due to legal uncertainties, especially in countries not used to the techniques of sustainable procurement, contracting authorities avoid the use of such a complex tool. This is even more difficult when applicable to the ICT sector, a fast-moving market, providing an infinite and constantly changing offer of goods and services. As such, our proposed approach to addressing the very complex issue of LCC in public procurement is a sector-specific analysis, with the intended outcome of developing a comprehensive LCC framework easily applicable to the purchase of ICT goods and services by contracting authorities interested to move beyond solely price considerations and contribute to the sustainability of their activities and, ultimately, of the ICT sector.