LOCAL TRUST, open-source e-tendering solution

Acronym of the case:

LOCAL TRUST

Web address of the case:

http://www.atexo.com

Country of the case:

France , Pan european , Africa , Asia

City/region:

Everywhere in France

Posting Date:

1 February 2010

Last Edited Date:

13 October 2011

Author:

Pierre FAU (ATEXO)

tender | Open source | procurement

Type of initiative

Project or service

Case Abstract

LOCAL TRUST is an e-tendering solution launched in 2003. It is fully open source.

The solution was developed and is maintained by ATEXO, an ICT company focused on e-government that is the leading supplier of e-tendering solutions in France.

The version 3 of the software was adopted by all the French administration (ministries and public agencies) in january 2008, representing 10 000 Purchasing Authorities.

LOCAL TRUST is covering a large definition of e-tendering, including:

eNoticing: online notice and XML flow to the JOUE, the national official journal and other media)
eTendering: documents withdrawal, questions from suppliers and electronic submittal (with digital signature and encryption if applicable
eAuctioning: to manage online auctions in the frame of public tenders
eAwarding: contract award notice, registering of contract details, digital signature of the contract by the Public Authority and generation of statistic report on public contracts compliant with EC and local regulations
eSourcing: register of suppliers with domain of supplies described with CPV code

The LOCAL TRUST solution is fully compliant with Directives 2004/18/CE and 2004/17/CE. It manages all the procedures covered by these Directives, including Dynamic purchasing systems and Framework agreement systems.

Description of the case

Domain

eGovernment

Topic

eProcurement | Services for Businesses

Sector

Procurement

Start date - End date

January 2008 (Ongoing)

Date operational

October 2008

Target Users

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

Target Users Description

The LOCAL TRUST solution is used by:

Buyers within Public Authorities
Suppliers of any kind (businesses, SME's, self-employed).

It is intended to Public Authorities of any size (ministries, local governments, city councils, public agencies, etc.)

The solution is specifically differenciating for global platform

Either regional, like Burgundy (http://www.e-bourgogne.fr)
Or thematic, like for the hospitals of North of France (https://marchespublics.nord-sante.org)

where all the Public Authorities manage their tenders on specific areas, and constitute a common portal for suppliers.

Scope

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

Status

Operation

Language(s)

Czech | English | French | Spanish | Swedish

Other

Arabic; additional translation is easy (no development)

Policy Context and Legal Framework

The solution is fully compliant the European Directives 2004/18/EC and 2004/17/EC.

It manages natively administration functionalities that enable to configure the solution to comply with the national regulations on public contract.

This flexibility may be used to configure the software for non-EU countries. For example, the solution is being deployed in Morocco with a configuration fully compliant with local regulations.

Project Size and Implementation

Type of initiative

IT infrastructures and products

Overall Implementation approach

Public administration

Technology choice

Standards-based technology | Mainly (or only) open standards | Accessibility-compliant (minimum WAI AA) | Open source software

Funding source

Public funding EU | Private sector

Project size

Implementation: €49-299,000

Yearly cost:

€1-49,000

Implementation and Management Approach

LOCAL TRUST is open source software.

A cloud service delivery is the most recommended and used economic model.

If prefered by the Public Authority, the project can be managed as a software project, with services related to the software, according to Public Authority's needs (project management, consulting, system integration, specific development, hosting, hot line).

For deployments outside France, the deployment methodolgy is based on cooperation with a local ICT company trained so that it provides autonomous front-end services locally.

The project of deploying LOCAL TRUST includes key training and support aspects. The solution includes embedded e-learning tools to favor wide adoption, even by organisations beyond the control of public Buyers (ex.: businesses).

Throughout the PROCURE (eTEN) project, we have built a proven successful methdology to accompany businesses to ensure effective adoption of electronic submittal to public tenders. This methodology targets specifically SME's and has proven records of measurable increase in the share of the SME's in the public procurement

Technology solution

LOCAL TRUST is a full web solution.

The core solution was developed using a Linux-Apache-Mysql-Php architecture.

NB: For the City of Paris, the buyer side of the software was fully re-developed in java on a Java EE architecture (in the frame of the EPM project, see www.epm.paris.fr).

The LOCAL TRUST solution includes a java applet that manages digital signature.

The digital signature applet is a priori not limiting the bids to a specific country. The software can manage constraints on the digital signature (such as qualified) but this is an optional configuration setting. In France for example, certain non qualified signature are accepted.

By default, LOCAL TRUST produces PKCS7-CMS-CAdES signatures. An extension to XAdES is possible.

The software editor is member of the PEPPOL project and plans to integrate in LOCAL TRUST the interoperable standards of PEPPOL:

Certificate validation through XKMS request to the European-wide certifiate validation architecture
Native management of XML files of Virtual Company Dossier

Impact, innovation and results

Impact

LOCAL TRUST is the leading solution for e-tendering in France, where e-tendering has been compulsory for any formal public contract since 01/01/2005.

There are approximately 20 000 Purchasing Authorities using LOCAL TRUST for 100% of their formal tenders, i.e. 100 000 tenders per annum.

In Morocco, all the public buyers will use the marchespublics.gov.ma platform for e-tendering starting 2T2010.

For Public Authorities, using LOCAL TRUST means:

Free off-the-shelve solution
Guaranteed compliance with EU and national regulations on public contracts
Risk-less application regarding legal challenge of the procedure
User-friendly and efficient everyday tool
Improved procurement services: wider spectrum of suppliers, better noticing of new tenders, reduced barriers to submittal
Traceability of procedures

Each platform manages its own register of suppliers. As an example, there are 10,000 registered suppliers on the e-bourgogne platform (Burgundy region and 1,000 local city councils) and 45,000 on the PMI platform (all French ministries and State-level agencies).

For suppliers, using LOCAL TRUST means:

Reduced costs and delays of public tenders: immediate and free withdrawal of tender documents, question on the tender and submittal of a bid
User-friendly and simple tool that can be used by anyone, in addition of embedded e-learning tools, and that fully embeds the digital signature process
Efficient alerting system
Efficient tender search tool including approximate search and CPV code

Track record of sharing

The LOCAL TRUST solution is intended to be fully shared with Public Authorities.

It is open source and free. As a consequence,

Setting a platform
Extending the scope of additional Public Authorities on an existing platforms

impliy no software costs.

LOCAL TRUST has been deployed in over 100 different contexts in 4 different countries. The associated deployment methodolgy is therefore proven and efficient.

Local
Trust received the ePractice the Good Preactice 2007 award as part of the PROCURE project and the LutÃ¨ce d'Or (City of Paris)
for the e-bourgogne project

Lessons learnt

The lessons learnt deal with:

Availability of an e-tendering solution off the shelve, proven (6 year-experience) and free (GPL)
Experienced project deployment methodology (TBI Project)
Communication, training and support program towards users (buyers and suppliers), with specific methodology to increase usage by SME's

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