The Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències (CACSA) in Valencia (Spain) is the first Public Administration in the EU to apply the European Interoperability Reference Architecture (EIRA©) and the Interoperability Test Bed (ITB) for a public procurement procedure.

The procurement’s Technical Specifications have been elaborated using EIRA©, facilitating the proposals’ evaluation process, with quality control support provided by the ITB.

EIRA© is a reference architecture defined by the European Commission, in alignment with the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) for the analysis of requirements and the design of a target solution use cases across borders and sectors. It defines the required capabilities for promoting Interoperability as a set of Architecture Building Blocks (ABBs).

The case: CACSA and the request for procuring a “Sede Electrónica”

The Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències (CACSA), the public company of the Generalitat Valenciana that manages the homonymous and world-known cultural and architectural space, wants to develop a new Digital Public Service, namely a “Sede Electrónica”. This is the Spanish term for “electronic office”, a portal where users, upon authentication, can access to a series of services of the Public Administration. To develop it, CACSA will rely on an economic operator selected through a public procurement tender.

And this is where EIRA© and ITB are brought into play: CACSA has decided to benefit from them and their synergies for all the procurement phases (i.e., request preparation, pre-award, and post-award).

The EIRA© leverage

In the request preparation phase, the European Commission provided support to CACSA in two key activities:

1. In the preparation of the High-Level requirements that would guide the subsequent detailed specifications.

2. In the preparation of the tender Technical Specifications based on more Detailed-Level requirements. 

As part of the first step, the process of preparing requirements started with the analysis of the Digital Business Capabilities (DBCs) that are necessary to develop the targeted Digital Public Service. In addition, the definitions of EIRA© ABBs and views (Legal, Organisational, Semantic, Technical) were analysed to identify the ABBs necessary in defining the High-Level requirements.

The second step took place once High-Level requirements were defined. Based on these, it was possible to add a further level of granularity and develop Detail-Level requirements that would constitute the tender Technical Specifications. These were in the form of a new Detailed-Level Solution Architecture Template (SAT). Solution Architecture Templates are EIRA©-based reusable blueprints for architects to model solutions and indicate the nature of the elements featuring within (e.g., new, reused, Legal, Organisational, Semantic, Technical).

Both steps of the request preparation, like modelling activities based on the EIRA©, were conducted in ArchiMate®, an Enterprise Architecture modelling language. As a result, public procurement Technical Specifications for the CACSA tender were defined in a model, whose relevant aspects to support Interoperability are shown below:

The model is available in both ArchiMate® and HTML formats in the attachments. To access to the HTML version, download the zip file, unzip it, and open the index.html file in there. 

After the Technical Specifications are elaborated and the tender is opened for competition, EIRA© keeps playing a role. In the pre-award phase, EIRA© will be of support to both the tenderers and CACSA:

• To the tenderers, the EIRA© framework will guide the understanding of the Technical Specifications thought the requested D-L SAT, and the formulation of a solution as an ArchiMate® model that addresses these specifications. Additionally, by using the EIRA© Validator, they will be able to validate if the proposal complies with the Technical Specifications before its submission. 

• To CACSA, EIRA© will be used to validate the defined Technical Specification and the solution proposals coming from the economic operators. This is facilitated by a first quality control step using the EIRA© Validator, hosted by the ITB

In the post-award phase, the synergy between EIRA© and ITB continues by leveraging the Test Bed’s complete conformance testing platform and evaluating the developed solutions to ensure their alignment with the foreseen model. Specifically, the requirements expressed in the D-L SAT can be used to develop executable test cases that the ITB can execute to measure the conformance of the awarded solution. As a quick reminder, the Interoperability Test Bed is a DIGIT’s service to carry out conformance testing of IT systems against target specifications and according to specific scenarios, not necessarily limited to public procurement, nor to requirements expressed through EIRA©. Moreover, the EIRA© Validator used in CACSA’s public procurement is just one of many validators that can be configured and hosted by the ITB. More information on this can be found in the ITB’s news article covering the CACSA public procurement case.

The EIRA© Validator

Along with the EIRA© as a reference architecture, the EIRA© Validator plays an equally fundamental role in the CACSA public procurement case. The EIRA© Validator, being a public tool available both to CACSA and the economic operators bidding for the tender, is a common point of reference for each party and provides support in multiple phases.

In the request preparation phase, it helped evaluating and validating the H-L requirements and D-L SATs. In the pre-award phase, it will allow for tenderers to validate their proposals before their submission, and for CACSA to do a first quality-check on the received proposals before proceeding with a deeper qualitative analysis. Finally, in the post-award phase, the EIRA© Validator will allow to test the conformance of the awarded solution to the Technical Specifications of the D-L SAT during its development.

Overall benefits of using EIRA© and ITB

The implementation of EIRA© and ITB within the procurement process has brought numerous benefits that can be replicated by other of Public Administrations willing to conduct public procurement procedures for Digital Public Services:

• Enhanced Interoperability: the application of EIRA© ensures that the proposed digital solutions are highly interoperable. This facilitates seamless integration with existing systems and decreases potential operational disruptions.

• Clear and precise Technical Specifications: by utilizing a detailed Solution Architecture Template (SAT), Public Administrations make sure that all parties have a shared understanding of the requirements and expectations.

• Efficient solution validation: the EIRA© Validator via the ITB enables both tenderers and Public Administrations to evaluate solutions whilst accepting only compliant solutions.

• Alignment with European standards: EIRA©’s framework certifies consistency and reliability of Digital Public Services.

• Transparency: the clear specification of requirements and rigorous validation process promotes transparency and fairness in the procurement process.

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