Albofornitori (Albofornitori)

Albofornitori is a platform for eProcurement which supports the following phases: eSourcing, ePublishing, eNoticing, eTendering, eAwarding. It's a:

1) certified suppliers electronic list for public awarding authorities

The list of suppliers is catalogued by a product/service classification, letting them upload electronic certificates and attestations.

2) eSourcing portal

Albofornitori includes a legal review, news from suppliers and from awarding authorities.

3) ePublishing and eNoticing portal

It manages the entire publication procedure covering all the informative debt as fixed by the national law: Guue (CSAmed is eSender with IT001 login), GURI (the Italian official journal), ministerial and regional websites, national and local newspapers.

Albofornitori offers a service for daily electronic distribution of European notices (CSAmed is a license holder), selected on the basis of the desired CPV and countries.

4) eTendering and eAwarding portal

It manages all the acquiring procedures according to the European and national law: best price / price + technical evaluation / price + technical evaluation with a final price auctions (open and restricted procedures).
Over European threshold it handles a specific procedure to assure the bid's inviolability, based on the use of electronic signature and timestamp. This procedure is registered by the national office (SIAE) and the international office (Washington copyright).

Main figures

• more than 7.000 suppliers
• more than 40 awarding authorities
• two regional centralized awarding authorities
• one association of 500 local authorities 
• about 3.000 tenders
• more than 1 billion euro transaction over the European threshold
• totally paperless procedure
• only 90 days between the official notice and the contract (on average)
• best results for the most complex tender: 64 days for 290 million, 100 suppliers, 900 items

 

Policy Context

Italian Regulation on electronic procurement for public administrations (DPR 101/2002)
Directive 2004/18/EC on Public Procurement
Italian Law on Public Procurement (D. Lgs. 163/2006)

Description of target users and groups

Public administrations on the one hand, and private suppliers on the other hand.

Technology solution

All services are in ASP (Application Service Provider) via HTTPS (SSL v3)

Operating system: VirtualIron (http://www.virtualiron.com/)

Database: MySQL version 5.1

Web server: Apache 2

J2EE application server: JBoss version 4.2.3 stable

Technology choice: Mainly (or only) open standards, Open source software

Main results, benefits and impacts

More than 7000 qualified suppliers

More than 40 awarding authorities, whereof 2 regional centralized authorities

More than 3000 auctions

More than 1 billion euro transactions over European threshold

Only 90 days between the official notice and the contract (on average)

Return on investment

Return on investment: Larger than €10,000,000

Lessons learnt

All things dealing with public procurement and usually managed in a traditional way can be managed in electronic way.

The main obstacle is cultural: users aren't still so familiar with technology and often choose the traditional paper mode only for habit.

The main benefits are organizational, since the needed resources are reduced and the working times are optimized.

 

Scope: Local (city or municipality), National, Regional (sub-national)