Antti brought competition and cartel expertise to Hansel
Antti Norkela, Head of Competition Division at the Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority, came for job rotation in Hansel in February 2022. Having worked with competition matters for twenty years, Antti had also solved several public procurement cases during his career, and now he wanted to learn more. As a large purchasing body, Hansel seemed an excellent place to gain a more profound understanding of public procurement.
Hansel was already somewhat familiar to Antti before the start of the job rotation. He had become acquainted with some of Hansel’s employees in working groups on combating the shadow economy, there had been training cooperation on both sides, and he had also studied some of Hansel’s competitive biddings when working in control duties over his long career. Antti himself took the initiative to organise the job rotation, and he thought that a year would be enough time to assimilate the new information. Antti was given the title of development manager, and a great deal of his work revolved around increasing competition and cartel expertise in Hansel.
“A new perspective on familiar things has given me a lot. It’s been interesting to mirror my own experiences with how things look here on the buyer’s side,” Antti explains his feelings during the last weeks of his job rotation.
Throughout the year, he was closely involved in monitoring a tendering process for mobile devices. He also updated the guidelines on the prevention of the shadow economy used by Hansel employees in their work. In addition, Antti organised an extensive series of internal training courses and meetings:
2022
- 21 April Procurement and competition, for the tendering unit
- 12 May Procurement, competition and tendering, for all employees
- 17 May Antitrust monitoring and procurement at the Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority, for the procurement development unit
- 6 June Tarja Valsi, Tommi Lehtinen etc., Finnish Tax Administration: Risks of the shadow economy and public procurement, for all employees
- 14 June Rehabilitation procurement and competition at the Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Kela), for the tendering unit
- 8 September Procurement and the significance of opening up public procurement to competition, a customer meeting: network of security authorities
- 13 October Customer webinar, with Anni Vanonen from the procurement control unit of the Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority
- 11 November Jan Jääskeläinen, the Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority: The state and significance of competition in public procurement, observations on procurement data, for all employees
- 17 November Vilhelmiina Ihamäki, the Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority: Joint offers and subcontracting, for the tendering unit
- 17 November Aapo Aaltio and Riku Buri, the Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority: Statistical methods and uncovering cartels based on procurement data, for all employees
2023
- 13 January Procurement data, its collection and analysis potential from the perspective of functional competition, a meeting between analysts and economists from Hansel and the Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority
- 19 January Cartels, procurement and buyers, for all employees
Interesting discussions are the best in job rotation
Antti says that he felt very welcome, and everything went well, even though coming to a new organisation during hybrid working gave him some pause at first:
“I’ve been really delighted with the interest my colleagues have shown in my area of expertise and the volume of feedback I’ve received on the presentations I have given, for example. People have also been really approachable and willing to talk about their job and experiences in procurement, which has been extremely valuable to me.”
Antti says that he highly recommends job rotation. He believes cooperation will be even closer in the future as people have become more familiar with each other. Antti also hopes that he will be able to continue to use his expertise in public procurement in a variety of ways when he returns to his own workplace.
“My idea that awareness raising and prevention play a big role in the fight against the shadow economy has only been strengthened by the good discussions I had at Hansel,” Antti sums up his thoughts.
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