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e-Procurement – pre- and post award (RP2024)

(A.) Policy and legislation

(A.1)   Policy objectives

Public procurement must ensure best value for money, while being transparent and simple as well as meeting environmental, innovative and social objectives. eProcurement is a key tool to achieve these goals.

(A.2) EC perspective and progress report

The 2014 Public Procurement Directives mandates the use of eProcurement as the main method for carrying out public procurement procedures. Since April 2016, electronic notification and electronic access to tender documents have been mandatory; eSubmission of tenders became mandatory for all buyers in October 2018.

The procurement Directives also require the Commission to adopt implementing regulations on procurement standard forms and on the European Single Procurement Document. Furthermore, the Commission is empowered to mandate the use of technical standards in other areas of eProcurement as long as these are "thoroughly tested and proved their usefulness in practice" (See Directive 2014/24/EU Art. 22, last paragraph).

eProcurement in the EU is driven by a thriving ecosystem of private and public eProcurement solution providers. Being able to choose between multiple systems can bring better services and lower prices. However, it can also bring challenges such as lock-in with particular eTendering providers and having to learn to work with multiple eTendering systems to access documents, submit bids, etc.

"Standards can offer solutions to these problems, as they can improve data portability, reduce the costs of understanding new systems and enable communication across systems. This has been recognised on various occasions, for example in 2013 by the Commission's Expert Group on eTendering (eTEG) and in 2016 by the Commission's Multi-Stakeholder Expert Group on eProcurement (EXEP). Such benefits will be available not only to public entities acting in the role as buyers, but also for private sector entities and service providers." 

However, the practical development and use of standards for eProcurement is not without its difficulties. Products of CEN (a main driver of eProcurement standardisation activities within the CEN-BII workshop and CEN/TC 440) have faced several practical challenges in their implementation into software, relating to their availability and copyright licensing requirements. In this context, also, CEN and CEN/TC 440 are working on the possibility to integrate Free and Open Source solutions into eProcurement standards. As a result, TC 440 started piloting the so called “derivate use” to ensure a free of charge use by the standard’s end-users.

CEN submitted a proposal to the EISMEA call in May 2023. Development of the standard is expected to continue until 2025-2026.

Besides this, the Publications Office started in 2016 the action to work on a freely available eProcurement Ontology, which is being used as a semantic model for the area of Public Procurement and which will be used for the standardisation done by CEN/TC 440.

(A.3) References 

(B.) Requested actions

Action 1: Support CEN TC 440 in the standardisation of eProcurement.

Action 2: Continue the development of the eProcurement ontology. The action owner for the ontology is the Publications Office of the EU together with stakeholders from Member States.

(C.) Activities and additional information  

(C.1) Related standardisation activities
CEN

CEN/TC 440 — "Electronic public procurement" — was established in 2015 with the ambition to cover the full end-to-end eProcurement process, with the exception of eInvoicing, which is covered by CEN/TC 434. It succeeded the CEN workshop WS/BII3, which was closed on the 9 March 2016.

To ensure that deliverables developed by CEN/TC 440 add value and meet the needs of the private and public actors along the supply chain (SC), CEN/TC 440 is focusing on developing deliverables to support interoperability in information exchange and data sharing in the business processes related to sourcing, tendering and operative processes like ordering and fulfilment (called pre- and post-award processes in the public sector). Being targeted at European eProcurement the deliverables of CEN/TC 440 will be developed to support EU strategies and EU legislation.

According to the most recent Business Plan, approved in March 2023, the priorities of CEN/TC 440 are to develop European standard specifications covering business process choreography, additional business control information, semantic information models and syntax bindings to support interoperable information exchange and data sharing in business processes related to eSubmission, eContract, eCatalogue, eOrdering, and eFulfilment. CEN/TC 440 will also provide guidance on requirements imposed by emerging technologies as well as the role that standards may play in the adoption of such technologies to support innovation.

CEN/TC440 has decided to make use of the eProcurement ontology semantic layer published by the Publication Office in its specifications and it is engaged in a collaboration with the Publication Office eProcurement working group to ensure that specific post award semantic requirements in standards are met by the eProcurement ontology.

The deliverables from CEN/TC 440 will be made available under a licensing regime that allows “Derivative Use” to mitigate some of the challenges identified in A.2.

CEN/TC 461 — ‘Integrity and accountability in public procurement’ — established to define requirements/recommendations for how organisations ensure integrity and accountability in public procurement activities and processes. The committee started drafting EN 17687:2022 ‘Public procurement - Integrity and accountability - Requirements and guidance’ in July 2020 and published the standard in August 2022. Having completed its task and with no further items to include in its work programme, the committee was made dormant in November 2022.

OASIS

The OASIS Universal Business Language (UBL) TC defines a common XML library of business document types supporting digitization of the commercial and logistical processes for domestic and international supply chains. Version 2.1 (UBL v2.1), used in several Member States and in OpenPEPPOL, was adopted as ISO/IEC 19845:2015. UBL includes document schemas that support eProcurement (eTendering) processes. The current versions of UBL are v2.3 as OASIS Standard and v2.4 as Committee Specification. The UBL TC aims to evolve UBL v2.4 to be an OASIS Standard and submit it to ISO/IEC JTC 1, while development of v2.5 has been started.

The eForms used for publishing eProcurement notices on TED (Tenders Electronic daily) is based on UBL v2.3.

The OASIS ebCore TC maintains the ebXML RegRep standard that defines the service interfaces, protocols and information model for an integrated registry and repository. The repository stores digital content while the registry stores metadata that describes the content in the repository. RegRep is used in OpenPeppol, in pre-award eTendering BIS profiles

  • BIS P006 – Search Notices (ebXML RegRep as container for query definition in search notices to public repositories such as Notification Platforms)
  • BIS P008 – Publish Notice (ebXML RegRep as container for publishing notices)

The inspiration was from TOOP which also included an eProcurement pilot.

ETSI

ETSI TC Human Factors is responsible for all Human Factors matters related to the usability and accessibility of ICT products, applications and services. Special care is paid to all aspects related to interfaces and interaction with the user. Human Factors is the scientific application of knowledge about human capacities and limitations in order to make products, systems, services and environments effective, efficient and easy for everyone to use.

UNECE

The United Nations Economic Commission Recommendation 43 on Sustainable Procurement underlines that the cost aspects of procurement should not be the only factors to determine the final attribution. Further aspects of social and environmental sustainability should be taken into consideration. This recommendation outlines these factors and provides a checklist to evaluate vendors as well as a supplier code of conduct. The UNECE suggests that these elements should be taken into consideration in the solutions which are deployed for eProcurement.

See: (available also in French and Russian) http://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/cefact/cf_plenary/2019_plenary/ECE_TRADE_C_CEFACT_2019_07E.pdf

IEEE

Some relevant activities with a focus on AI include:

  • IEEE P2863, Recommended Practice for Organizational Governance of Artificial Intelligence
  • IEEE P3119, Standard for the Procurement of Artificial Intelligence and Automated Decision Systems is a new IEEE standards activity

For more information, see: https://ieee-sa.imeetcentral.com/eurollingplan/.

ITU

ITU-T Study Group 5 “Environment, EMF and Circular Economy” developed Recommendation ITU-T L.1061 “Circular public procurement of information and communication technologies” which is accompanied with a guide on Circular and sustainable public procurement – ICT equipment guide and an e-learning training. ITU-T SG5 has also produced ITU-T L.Suppl.20 on Green public ICT procurement. Additionally, ITU-T SG5 developed Recommendation ITU-T L.1304 – Procurement criteria for sustainable data centre.

ITU also coordinates the United for Smart Sustainable Cities (U4SSC) Initiative, which is a UN initiative that develops action plans, technical specifications, case studies, guidelines and offer policy guidance for cities to become smarter and more sustainable. The U4SSC Initiative is currently working on a Thematic Group on “Procurement for Smart Sustainable Cities”. U4SSC also developed the deliverable on “Procurement guidelines for smart sustainable cities”.

More info: https://u4ssc.itu.int/

(C.2) Other activities related to standardisation
ISA2 actions

SEMIC action on CCCEV (Core Criterion and core evidence Vocabulary) to help make the ESPD data model domain independent like the other Core Vocabularies

eProcurement ontology to enable the rationalisation and interoperability within the public procurement workflow for the various actors concerned and facilitate the creation, exchange, dissemination and reuse of the resulting data.

Under the ISA2 program the ESPD data model as well eCertis was developed. Through the CEF eProcurement DSI services were financially supported to implement ESPD services. Currently, almost all EU countries have at least one ESPD service in place and a high number are connected through eCertis. ISA2 and currently Interoperable Europe provides the test bed which is used to validate ESPD XML files which are based on UBL as well as eInvoices to check compliance with the standard on eInvoice (EN 16931-1:2017).

The ISA² Programme has evolved into Interoperable Europe - the initiative of the European Commission for a reinforced interoperability policy.

See the work programme http://ec.europa.eu/isa/library/documents/isa2-work-programme-2016-detailed-action-descriptions_en.pdf

OpenPeppol

PEPPOL was a EU large-scale pilot project (LSP) from 2008-2012. It provided a set of technical specifications that can be implemented in existing eProcurement solutions, and enables trading partners to exchange standards-based eProcurement documents.

Following the closing of the PEPPOL-project, OpenPeppol AISBL took over governance of the solutions developed.

The Peppol transport infrastructure is now implemented by hundreds of service providers throughout Europe, servicing thousands of public and private entities, including the post-award processes of eProcurement.

http://www.peppol.org/. 

e-SENS

The ‘Electronic Simple European Networked Services’ (e-SENS), ended in 2017, was an EU LSP project integrating results from PEPPOL and other eGovernment LSPs. The e-SENS Work Package 5.1 focused on eProcurement. An important milestone was reached in January 2015. Phase I in work package 5.1 was processed successfully, allowing for the first time, to interchange a publication and an application for participation between the Netherlands (Tendernet), Denmark (ETHICS) and Germany (XVergabe) Gateway to e-Vergabe from BeschA) with PEPPOL infrastructure, consisting of access points from IBM Denmark and the University of Piraeus Greece. Part of the work is based on specifications from CEN WS/BII3.

EXEP

The multi-stakeholder expert group on eProcurement (EXEP) assists and advises the Member States and the Commission on implementing the provisions of the new public procurement Directives relating to electronic procurement. It contributes to monitoring the uptake of eProcurement across the EU, sharing best practices, following new developments in the field, and addressing interoperability issues. The EXEP liaised closely with the now closed European multi-stakeholder forum on eInvoicing (EMSFEI) and with national forums to further promote the uptake of end-to-end eProcurement across the EU, including in the post-award phase. The group is responsible for ensuring the coherence between the recommendations arose from the EMSFEI and broader policies on end-to-end eProcurement. In addition, EXEP provides governance and support for initiatives like CEF and governs the standardisation process in the area of eProcurement.

TOOP

The Once-Only Principle Project (TOOP) was launched by the European Commission in January 2017 as an initiative of more than 50 organisations and closed on 31 March 2021.

The main objective of TOOP was to explore and demonstrate the once-only principle across borders, focusing on data from businesses. Doing this, TOOP enabled better exchange of business related data or documents with and between public administrations and reduced administrative burden for both businesses and public administrations.

The TOOP project ended in March 2021. Its outcome was used as a basis for the technical implementation of the Single Digital Gateway Regulation  i.e., the Once Only Technical System. The Regulation will come into force in 12/12/2023. 

https://www.toop.eu/

(C.3) additional information

The Netherlands facilitates a National community for eInvoicing and eProcurement by providing 3 public/private platforms (STPE.NL, Netherlands Peppol Authority Communities NPAC & NMBF).

This community aims to:

  • Maintain and update the current and future national standards on eProcurement through public/private involvement. (STPE, NPA Communities)
  • Facilitate long-term community feedback on current and future policies. (NMBF)
  • Maintain and update the infrastructure standards on eProcurement. (NPA Communities)

This community furthermore voices the Dutch position on eProcurement towards Europe.

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