Policy Context and Legal Framework

This Project continues to be an effective part of the e-government program of the Piedmont Region, in past years was also financed by CNIPA (National Information Technology Center in Public Administration). Project strategy is to expand the service gradually, in succeeding stages with incremental functionalities and number of actors (public and private) involved.
The strategy, first, carried out a feasibility study and an examination of reference legislation, existing case studies and possible architectural and infrastructural solutions available. Later, it enabled government offices and enterprises to access to the of e-procurement system providing them with basic procurement functions considered “core” and most interesting for both parties. Since 2004 up to now additional standard functions, and other new developed, were added to satisfy local PA and the changing legislation needs.For instance: public procurement regulation (descending from EU Directives 2004/18/CE and 2004/17/CE) and Italian PA computerization.
As regards the business model adopted, it foreseen a partnership strategy assigning the implementation and IT development to an external company and, later on, the e-procurement service outsourcing to the same partner (CSI-Piemonte).
The system is currently owned by CSI-Piemonte (a public consortium) which has always performed a multiple role: developer, project and IT platform manager and service provider, thus it also performs process and assistance directly to the end users.
The fact that the platform is owned by CSI-Piemonte configures the initiative as a “sort of” project financing born years ago. In addition allows to CSI Piemonte to sell management and consultancy services to all territorial PA bodies of Piedmont.

Implementation and Management Approach

The partnership made was cross PA. In fact the local Government of Regione Piemonte made a partnership with CSI-Piemonte to manage, implement and develop the eProcurement project.
CSI-Piemonte is a Public Consortium whose founders and main backer are local PA of the Piedmont geographical area. CSI-Piemonte act like a global outsoucer of the entire service and project.

Technology solution

The solution is based both on market and internally developed products. The information portal was completely internally developed instead, the platform managing eTenders (included eAcutions), eCatalogues and framework agreement is a commercial package highly customised by CSI-Piemonte. It uses semantic standards as CPV codes, national localisation codes; other standard as XML, txt and xls format to exchange data, supports both Digital signature and Time stamping (specification coming from italian law) for document storage and submission.
There is a fine user profiling to manage different roles and tasks, the system uses automatic notification to the users through certified e-mail (italian law).The portal follows the AAA standards and others.
Process Phases fully covered: eAccess, eSubmition, eAwarding;
Process Phases Partially covered: eSourcing, eNoticing, eOrders.

Impact

Public Authorities
AOP Acquisti On line Piemonte service has been continuing to growth since its go live (2003). In particular between 2006 and 2007 there was a stronger service usage by the Health Sector. Several tenders related to medical apparels, medicines, medical consumable stuff, etc. were run and in 2007 a big tenders in aggregation of demand was made on medicines. On the eCatalogues side during 2006-2007 there was a rise-up in the number of items passing the stage of 13.500.
The transaction amount covered using catalogues is over 2 millions euro.
About framework agreement the ones expired were replaced by new confirming the interest demonstrated by local government.
Number of registered suppliers is increased of 5 times respect to second half of 2005 reaching at the end of 2007 about 1900 companies.
About 290 electronic auction/tenders were run on the system for an amount over 73 millions euro.
we count about 60 registered PA, the greater municipalities of Piemonte including the chief town. On Private Sector
Companies, among all serctors independetly form Their size, operate on the AOP system. The suppliers' size depends on the supplier markets morphology.
We count about 1.900 and 1.000 of them used the system in 2007, thanks to the system SME had the possibility to be more informed and to participate to tenders.
Benefits
The project impact isn’t a one off phenomenon because its produces positive growing effects since 2003.
In fact from the beginning the service faced an expansion as in terms of usage as in terms of functionalities available to the end users.
The service demonstrates viability and excellence in the following areas from a qualitative and quantitative point of view:
A - Qualitative
1.external effetcs on consumers: better quality of data and service due to transparency, security and data centralization/standardization related to PP
2.effects for Gov’ t: process efficiency increase, higher computerization (also in commnication with digital signature and Certified e-mail), employees’ knowledge increase, better data to perform monitoring,
3.effects for Business industry: simplification in relations with PA, potential rise of business opportunities
B – Quantitative
1.effects for Gov’t: Avarage purchasing prices savings 30%, purchasing process time decreasing in average of 30%, more than 13.500 items managed on eCatalogues, wide range of item category managed
One local government runns on our eProcurement service about 50% of the tender managed yearly.

Lessons learnt

The three main lessons learnt are:
1) the importance of training and communication through PA employees to make the success because miseducation hinders any kinds of initiative
2) the need of a strong Managemet Commitment from Local Administrations
3) Pay attention to the legislation to evolve the service fastly