Policy Context and Legal Framework

Brite is financed by Framework Programme 6 (FP6) - the European Community Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration. FP6 is a collection of the actions at EU level to fund and promote research. The Case relies on regulations governing procurements within the public sector in EU - and EES countries. They derive from the rules established through the Directives [Directive 2004/17/EC –Public utilities contracts] and [Directive 2004/18/EC –Public sector procurement (eligibility of tenderers)]. These two directives and the subsequent national regulations that have been established in almost every European country as a result, have determined a legal standard as to the management of public procurements. Through this, a legal structure has been established when it comes to the practical procurement process as a whole and, which is of main interest for this paper, the evidences that a procurer may call for in connection to the qualification and evaluation of the bidders and their companies. In addition to these fundamental directives, a number of adjacent national laws have been established and among them regulations with specific focus on the before mentioned evidences or certificates, for example the Swedish ordinance (1998:1364) on evidences used in public procurements.

Implementation and Management Approach

The process analysis, its definition and design adopts a modelling strategy outlining specific interactions as shown below : • Business Interaction [Contracting Authority (CA)-- Broker] and [Bidder-- Broker] the interaction affects the Tenderer/Procurer and the nearest (local) Broker. • Technical Interaction [Broker -- Composer] the interaction affects the facilitators for the service, through the required technical operations and the organisational agreement they’ll make. • Legal Interaction [Bidder-- Certifier] the interaction affects the legal relationship taking place between the Tenderer that applies for the production of a given certificate and the Certifying body that has to judge and approve the correctness of the request and the presence of the conditions required to process a certificate generation. • Administrative Interaction [Composer -- Certifier] the interaction affects bodies involved into administrative simplification actions or public service activities. The project is managed by distinct partners: - Global Coordination is done by EBR EEIG in Brussels - Technical management is done by InfoCamere - Italy - Concertation Coordination is done by Company Registration Office in Ireland

Technology solution

A general architecture is based on a centralized service bus hosting different components. Message exchange is based on services invocation through dedicated adapters acting as gateways between the remote applications and the centralized service bus. The service bus features specialized processors that perform dedicated activities. The simplified list consists of a Process Manager, Event Manager, Monitoring Manager, the Common Ontology Repository, Registries and Horizontal Service Facilities.

Impact

The case addresses two primary eProcurement phases, i.e. the pre-awarding phase (eNotification and eTendering): allowing bidders and Contracting Authorities to manage their interactions during the online tender process. The eTendering process very often includes advertisement, expression of interest, pre-qualification questionnaires (PQQ), invitation to tender (ITT), reverse auctions and award notifications. It can be used for procurements of any category, size, complexity and value, both above and below the various thresholds. Awarding phase: dealing with evaluation plans, assessment criteria, evaluation of tender documentation and carrying out of bid comparisons.

Lessons learnt

Lesson 1 – Interoperability relies on knowledge sharing. The most frequent challenge concerns the transfer of that knowlegde. Lesson 2 – Technology can introduce a burden when daily human driven processes have to be converted into classified sequences of events and actions. The learning curve and the transfer of knowledge can take a relevant amount of time. That burden gets compensation everytime we get faster and reliable execution of activities. Lesson 3 – The Business Community takes advantage everytime the public administrations reach new forms of simplification on the operations they manage. Lesson 4 – Technology and legal provisions have a parallel road to follow with mutual supporting demand.