Impact

Thanks to eProcurement, there has been a significant opening-up of the market of the Basque Government, which can be seen in the following figures: 

·          The number of companies that take part in tenders has increased by 14%.

·          The number of companies filed with the Official Contractors Register has increased by 18%.  Filing with the register indicates the company's intention of becoming a usual participant in tenders. 

In the period 2006-2008, the user service centre attended 1409 requests for support filed by the companies that take part in tenders, totalling the figure of 1056 hours of operative collaboration for solving technical incidents and queries. 

In 2008, a satisfaction questionnaire was completed by bidding companies.  We can highlight the following:  

·          78% of those surveyed rated the e-procurement system as good or very good.

·          87% of those surveyed did not indicate that they had had problems with tendering electronically.

·          50% of those surveyed requested help from the user support centre and 80% of those who did so rated the service as good or very good. 

In the period 2006-2008, 27 diffusion days were held for the companies that take part in tenders, involving the attendance of 1324 individuals on behalf of 1100 companies, almost one third of our usual suppliers. 

In the area of training, the following milestones have been reached: 

·          We have given 110 in-class training courses that have involved 1019 individuals.

·          The total number of downloads of our videos on YouTube exceeds the figure of 14,000.

·          More than 600 free tenders have been offered.

·          220 procurement technicians have been trained over an accumulated total of 5500 hours of training. 

The 21 catalogues, which we offer on the various aspects of eProcurement, have become a mandatory reference for any Spanish public administration wishing to adopt eProcurement. Our annual reports have been used as a basis for several doctoral theses completed at Spanish universities. 

The following have been the most important operative achievements: 

·          The Basque Government has been the first Spanish public Administration to launch exclusively eProcurement project.

·          The Basque Health Service developed its first electronic tender for the procurement of drugs, becoming the first organisation in the health sector to carry out eProcurement processes in Spain.

·          The Basque Government has been the first Spanish administration to accept e-bid bonds.

·          The Basque Government was the first public administration in Spain to certify OJS eSender by the European Commission and automatically send announcements to the Official Journal of the European Union.

·          Nine departments of the Basque Government and eight autonomous bodies and public institutions regularly hold electronic tenders, with an accumulated total of 137 electronic tenders totalling an accumulated volume of €110 million.

·          Most of the goods and services contracted by means of eProcurement correspond to the provision of intellectual services (consultancy services, computer developments, advertising, etc.), an area that is not very common in eProcurement. This means that our initiatives are highly innovative in comparison with the eProcurement carried out by other European Administrations.

·          65% of the projects have received digital bids and, on average, 27.6% are received as digital bids.

·          Frequent electronic tenders are being held with a majority of digital bids. 

In June 2008, the Basque Government agreed the incorporation of social, environmental criteria and other public policies in the procurement of the autonomous community's administration and its public sector. Accordingly, it became the first Spanish public administration to incorporate environmental and sustainability criteria as a general rule in its human processes.

(For more information, see Additional Documents N1, N2 and N3).

Track record of sharing

For the past 3 years, the Basque Government has presented its eProcurement system at the following events: 

·          Training courses on the administrative procurement of the European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA).

·          15 conferences organised by public and private institutions across Spain.

·          IANIS + Conference.

·          Meeting of the EU eProcurement Working Group.

·          Plenary meeting of the eProcure project.

·          International Public Procurement Congress in Amsterdam.

·          Plenary meeting of the European Open Method of Coordination - Public Technology Document Project.

·          United Nations Institute for Training and Research.

·          Participation in the day titled "Social Consideration and Social Clauses in Public Procurement" in Helsinki. 

The Basque Government's eProcurement System is included in ePractice.eu as case 2159 under the name of Public Electronic Tendering System of the Basque Country (eProcurement, Spain).  

The Basque Government and the European Institute of Public Administration have collaborated on the organisation of 3 (three) international seminars on International Public eProcurement, which were held in Bilbao and San Sebastián in 2004, 2006 and 2007. 

The Basque Government fosters collaboration within the framework of public eProcurement and, accordingly, wishes to provide the following stable instruments for collaborating with the administrations that are interested:  To date, the specific forms of collaboration have been as follows: 

·     Knowledge exchange:

-          The Basque Government takes an active part in the "eProcurement" working party promoted by the Ministry of Public Administration of the Government of Spain and the 17 Regions.

-          The Basque Government has taken part in working parties or in knowledge exchange sessions with the Ministry of Public Administration and 5 Regional Governments of Spain (Catalonia, Andalusia, Valencia, Galicia and Extremadura). 

·     Development of an agreement for the transfer of eProcurement system technology to other interested administrations. The convention includes the following options:

-          Use of the electronic tender system by other administrations.

-          Delivery of source code for the electronic tendering product software. 

·     General offer for collaboration for the extension of eProcurement to the Federation of Municipalities and the 3 provincial governments of the Basque Country. 

Finally, all applications, information and educational materials are considered “open source” and available to all interested administrations.

(For more information, see Additional Documents N1, N2 and N3).

Lessons learnt

 ·          Firm political will for eProcurement adoption is essential. 

·          The interoperability between institutions providing electronic signatures needs to be improved. 

·          A high diversity of platforms will stand as an obstacle to the adoption of eProcurement.   So, it would be useful to share “open source” developments. 

·          Training in eProcurement has been very well received by companies, serving as a good vehicle for its extension.  Small and Medium-sized Enterprises were the most committed users of our tendering system. 

·          The various forms of eProcurement, due to the strictness of the applicable regulations, are ideal for studying and establishing the control and monitoring mechanisms required by the regulatory and legal aspects that govern the administration’s digital services. 

·            As mentioned earlier, our procurement activity is mainly devoted to contracting mastermind services.   Therefore, the offers we receive are complex and heavy.     Sometimes, companies have tried to send offers of over 250 Mb.  Our main operative limitation, at present, is the maximum volume of the file that can be electronically signed and sent.  Today, we face the following limitations: 

-          The low bandwidth available. As you probably know, the European Commission estimates that, compared to other European countries, bandwidth is extremely expensive in Spain.

-          In many cases, as a result of the low bandwidth, companies risk attending the maximum duration of the time window (2 hours) allocated to the digital bid signature and sending sessions.

-          We also suffer from the limits of Java technology.   In many cases, the Java Virtual Machine breaks down when trying to sign large files electronically.

-          A similar problem arises with electronic signature software,   which fails tragically when trying to sign files over 40 Mb. 

Accordingly, in order to overcome the said limitations, we will proceed with the following in the year 2009: 

-          The adoption of two time-separated electronic tendering stages, within a 24-hour deadline, as provided in the new Spanish contracting law.

-          We would also like to develop the system for the contribution of complementary documentation, which is a new system we have called “the lift system” in order to provide a new tool for forwarding technical annexes, brochures, general corporate information and project references.  These elements are by far the ones that create the most relevant difficulties when signing and sending offers related to mastermind services.