(A.) Policy and legislation
(A.1) Policy objectives
Public procurement must ensure best value for money, while being transparent and simple as well as meeting environmental, innovative and social objectives. E-procurement is a key tool to achieve these goals.
(A.2) EC perspective and progress report
The 2014 Public Procurement Directives make e-Procurement the main method for carrying out public procurement. Since April 2016, electronic notification and electronic access to tender documents have been mandatory; e-submission of tenders became mandatory for all buyers in October 2018.
The procurement Directives also require the Commission to adopt implementing regulations on procurement standard forms and on the European Single Procurement Document. Furthermore, the Commission is empowered to mandate the use of technical standards in other areas of e-procurement as long as these are “thoroughly tested and proved their usefulness in practice”27
E-procurement in the EU is driven by a thriving ecosystem of private and public e-procurement solution providers. Being able to choose between multiple systems can bring better services and lower prices. However, it can also bring challenges such as lock-in with particular eTendering providers and having to learn to work with multiple e-Tendering systems to access documents, submit bids, etc.
Standards can offer solutions to these problems, as they can improve data portability, reduce the costs of understanding new systems and enable communication across systems. This has been recognized on various occasions, for example in 2013 by the Commission’s Expert Group on e-Tendering (eTEG) and in 2016 by the Commission’s Multi-stakeholder Expert Group on e-Procurement (EXEP).
However, the practical development and use of standards for e-Procurement is not without its difficulties. First, products of CEN (a main driver of e-procurement standardisation activities within the CEN-BII workshop and CEN/TC 440) have faced several practical challenges in their implementation into software, relating to their availability and copyright licensing requirements. For example, it should be clarified whether some licensed standards must be purchased only by those who develop IT solutions, or whether a license also is required by those who use the software (or build their own). Similarly, it should also be clarified whether a nationally purchased standard can be accessed (e.g. online) from any EU country or even globally. These problems are exacerbated by copyright policies being set at country level by National Standardisation Bodies. Therefore, the European Commission and stakeholders are working together to find solutions for the implementation of the standards’ contents into IT products throughout Europe. In this context, also, CEN and CEN/TC 440 are working on the possibility to integrate Free and Open Source solutions into eProcurement standards.
Second, a number of questions have come up regarding e-procurement standardisation in a fast-paced digitally transforming world. These questions include:
- what technical form should standards have (e.g. semantic only, syntactic, reusable code);
- how should market needs (and their fulfilment) be reliably assessed;
- how should standards be developed to meet rapidly changing needs;
- which phases of e-procurement should be standardised;
- who should develop the standards;
- what is an appropriate cost (if any) to pay for the development of this public good and for accessing it.
(A.3) References
- Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/1780 of 23 September 2019 establishing standard forms for the publication of notices in the field of public procurement and repealing Implementing Regulation (EU) 2015/1986 (eForms) (Text with EEA relevance)
- COM(2012) 179 final — Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions on a strategy for e-Procurement
- COM(2013) 453 final on end-to-end e-Procurement to modernise public administration
- Directives 2014/23/EU (concessions), 2014/24/EU (general) and 2014/25/EU (sectoral) on public procurement
- Directive 2014/55/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council on electronic invoicing in public procurement (especially the part on contract management which is linked to e-Procurement; please note there is a separate chapter on e-Invoicing).
- Commission Implementing Regulation 2016/7 establishing the standard form for the European Single Procurement Document
- Commission Implementing Regulation 2015/1986 establishing standard forms for the publication of notices in the field of public procurement
(B.) Requested actions
Action 1 Together with stakeholders, Commission services will discuss internally the assessment results. Valuable input is expected from this analysis to be discussed with the related working groups, in particular with the Commission’s Multi-stakeholder Expert Group on e-Procurement’s (EXEP’s). The topic should also be raised with the Commission’s Multi-Stakeholder Platform on ICT Standardisation.
Action 2 Depending on the results Action 1, the Commission may support operational standardisation work (e.g. by coordination and/or grants).
Action 3 Benefit from the e-Procurement ontology (part of the ISA2 work programme). The action owner for the ontology is the Publications Office of the EU (Publications Office).
(C.) Activities and additional information
(C.1) Related standardisation activities
CEN
CEN/TC 440 — “Electronic public procurement” — established to standardise e-procurement in support of the electronic public procurement process and the related information flows in the physical and financial supply chain. This facilitates end-to-end e-procurement, including both pre- and post-award processes. It succeeded the CEN workshop WS/BII3, which was closed on the 9 March 2016. CEN/TC 440 decided in June 2020 to temporarily refocus its activities to developing standardisation deliverables covering the supply chain management (SCM) and activities of the post-award process only.
CEN/TC 461 — “Integrity and accountability in public procurement” — established to define requirements/recommendations for how organizations ensure integrity and accountability in public procurement activities and processes. Work on this is at an early stage and ongoing.
OASIS
The OASIS Universal Business Language (UBL) TC defines a common XML library of business document types supporting digitization of the commercial and logistical processes for domestic and international supply chains. Version 2.1 (UBL v2.1), used in several Member States and in OpenPEPPOL, was adopted as ISO/IEC 19845:2015. UBL includes document schemas that support e-Procurement (e-Tendering) processes.
ETSI
ETSI TC Human Factors is responsible for all Human Factors matters related to the usability and accessibility of ICT products, applications and services. Special care is paid to all aspects related to interfaces and interaction with the user. Human Factors is the scientific application of knowledge about human capacities and limitations in order to make products, systems, services and environments effective, efficient and easy for everyone to use.
UNECE
The United Nations Economic Commission Recommendation 43 on Sustainable Procurement underlines that the cost aspects of procurement should not be the only factors to determine the final attribution. Further aspects of social and environmental sustainability should be taken into consideration. This recommendation outlines these factors and provides a checklist to evaluate vendors as well as a supplier code of conduct. The UNECE suggests that these elements should be taken into consideration in the solutions which are deployed for eProcurement.
See: (available also in French and Russian) http://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/cefact/cf_plenary/2019_plenary/ECE_TRADE_C_CEFACT_2019_07E.pdf
Other activities related to standardisation
ISA2 actions
SEMIC action on CCEV (Core Criteria/Evidence Vocabulary) to help make the ESPD data model domain independent like the other Core Vocabularies
E-Procurement ontology to enable the rationalisation and interoperability within the public procurement workflow for the various actors concerned and facilitate the creation, exchange, dissemination and reuse of the resulting data.
Under the ISA2 program the ESPD data model as well eCertis was developed. Through the CEF eProcurement DSI services were financially supported to implement ESPD services. Currently, almost all EU countries have at least one ESPD service in place and a high number are connected through eCertis. ISA2 provides the test bed which is used to validate ESPD XML files which are based on UBL as well as eInvoices to check compliance with the standard on eInvoice (EN 16931-1:2017).
See the work programme http://ec.europa.eu/isa/library/documents/isa2-work-programme-2016-detailed-action-descriptions_en.pdf
OpenPEPPOL
PEPPOL was a EU large-scale pilot project (LSP) from 2008-2012. It provided a set of technical specifications that can be implemented in existing e-Procurement solutions, and enables trading partners to exchange standards-based e-Procurement documents.
Following the closing of the PEPPOL-project, OpenPEPPOL AISBL took over governance of the solutions developed.
The PEPPOL transport infrastructure is now implemented by hundreds of service providers throughout Europe, servicing thousands of public and private entities, including the post-award processes of e-procurement. http://www.peppol.eu.
e-SENS
The ‘Electronic Simple European Networked Services’ (e-SENS), ended in 2017, was an EU LSP project integrating results from PEPPOL and other eGovernment LSPs. The e-SENS Work Package 5.1 focused on e-Procurement. An important milestone was reached in January 2015. Phase I in work package 5.1 was processed successfully, allowing for the first time, to interchange a publication and an application for participation between the Netherlands (Tendernet), Denmark (ETHICS) and Germany (XVergabe) Gateway to e-Vergabe from BeschA) with PEPPOL infrastructure, consisting of access points from IBM Denmark and the University of Piraeus Greece. Part of the work is based on specifications from CEN WS/BII3.
EXEP
The multi-stakeholder expert group on e-Procurement (EXEP) assists and advises the Member States and the Commission on implementing the provisions of the new public procurement Directives relating to electronic procurement. It contributes to monitoring the uptake of e-Procurement across the EU, sharing best practices, following new developments in the field, and addressing interoperability issues. The EXEP liaised closely with the now closed European multi-stakeholder forum on e-invoicing (EMSFEI) and with national forums to further promote the uptake of end-to-end e-Procurement across the EU, including in the post-award phase. The group is responsible for ensuring the coherence between the recommendations arose from the EMSFEI and broader policies on end-to-end e-Procurement. In addition, EXEP provides governance and support for initiatives like CEF and governs the standardisation process in the area of e-Procurement.
TOOP
The Once-Only Principle Project (TOOP) was launched by the European Commission in January 2017 as an initiative of more than 50 organisations. The main objective of TOOP is to explore and demonstrate the once-only principle across borders, focusing on data from businesses. Doing this, TOOP wants to enable better exchange of business related data or documents with and between public administrations and reduce administrative burden for both businesses and public administrations. The TOOP will also have implications for the Single Digital Gateway project. http://www.toop.eu/
(C.2) additional information
The Netherlands facilitates a National community for e-Invoicing and e-Procurement by providing 3 public/private platforms (STPE.NL, Netherlands Peppol Authority Communities NPAC & NMBF).
This community aims to:
- Maintain and update the current and future national standards on e-procurement through public/private involvement. (STPE, NPA Communities)
- Facilitate long-term community feedback on current and future policies. (NMBF)
- Maintain and update the infrastructure standards on e-procurement. (NPA Communities)
This community furthermore voices the Dutch position on e-Procurement towards Europe.
27 See 2014/24/EU Art. 22 last paragraph