Irish Government's eTenders Portal

Acronym of the case:

eTenders

Web address of the case:

http://www.millstream.eu/portfolio/Ireland.as...

Country of the case:

Ireland

Posting Date:

25 April 2008

Last Edited Date:

25 April 2008

Author:

Tim Williams (Millstream Associates Ltd)

eTendering | esourcing | eProcurement

Type of initiative

Project or service
Strategic initiative

Case Abstract

In conjunction with the Department of Finance in Dublin, Millstream has developed and operates Ireland's national eProcurement portal. The portal has been extremely successful and has helped to standardise tendering processes into one online system for both purchasers and suppliers. It has engaged more suppliers in the Irish procurement market and has been an effective tool for managing both high and low value contracts.

The portal delivers reliability and speed of response and is flexible in terms of introducing new modules as and when the market requires. It operates in dual language, provides essential information on legislation and regulations and is supported via email and telephone by Millstream's dedicated support team.

Description of the case

Domain

eGovernment

Topic

Sector

Procurement

Start date - End date

September 2003 (Ongoing)

Date operational

September 2003

Target Users

Business (industry) | Business (SME) | Business (self-employed) | Administrative | Intermediaries

Target Users Description

There are two main target groups, i.e. public sector purchasing officers and their prospective suppliers.

As at April 2008, the eTenders portal has 4,000 public purchasers and 40,000 suppliers registered.

Scope

International | National | Regional (sub-national) | Local (city or municipality)

Status

Operation

Language(s)

English

Other

Gaeilge (Irish)

Policy Context and Legal Framework

Project Size and Implementation

Type of initiative

IT infrastructures and products

Overall Implementation approach

Partnerships between administration and/or private sector and/or non-profit sector

Technology choice

Mainly (or only) open standards | Accessibility-compliant (minimum WAI AA)

Funding source

Public funding national

Project size

Implementation: €500-999,000

Yearly cost:

€49-299,000

Technology solution

The eTenders portal is written in ASP.NET and uses an Oracle database.

All data is stored in an XML format corresponding to the eSender DTD formats proposed by the European Commission's Publications Office (OPOCE)

Impact, innovation and results

Economic effects

€1,000,000-5,000,000

Lessons learnt

Following a phased implementation allowed user experiences and priorities to be incorporated in the development of the system

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There's been a lot of discussion on if and how civil servants could blog, in particular following the CivilSerf episode in the UK.
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Here you can find them.
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05 July 2008 | 0 Visit | Rating: No votes

Hi,

I've found the government blogging scene to be extremely light in Australia. While a number of public servants here blog, their topics are generally personal or interest-related, rather than government specific.

That's part of the reason I started my blog (http://egovau.blogspot.com) to see if I could find other people in the same space to extend my networking.

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Any information anyone can give me on the processes they went through to establish these types of guidelines would be immensely welcome (email me at craig.thomler@gmail.com)

Great community here btw.

Colonising ground

30 April 2008 | 3401 Visits | Rating: No votes

It is good to see that Scotland, Ireland and Norway establish a common platform (based on the business-activities of a provider). That, I presume, is now the Anglo-Saxon (plus Nordic??) best practice example. The Basque Governments eProcurement initiative, available free of charge to like-minded authorities, could become the benchmark for at least the Hispanic region and the German provider's solution for the procurement in German ministries and also the European Central Bank could be yet another desirable platform. And there are more good initiatives out there.

It should be very interesting to see whether (and how) they converge on a common user-interface for the international bidders.

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