Voluntary publishing of small tenders

Norway is working towards establishing a solution for voluntary publishing of small tenders. The solution is planned to be part of the national tender notification service Doffin and will cover tenders below national thresholds. Today, use of Doffin is mandatory for publication of tenders above national and EU thresholds.

In Norway it is mandatory to publish all tenders above the EU-thresholds in the national tender notification service Doffin (www.doffin.no) as well as in the Official Journal (as it is for the member states in the EU). In addition it is also mandatory to publish all tenders above a national threshold, NOK 500 000 (app. EUR 62 500) on Doffin. Currently there is a rather intense discussion going on concerning all the tenders beyond the national threshold – should they be published, too? If so, how should this be done?

The starting point is that such notifications should be kept as simple as possible, containing only basic information, such as the name of the public procurer, his address/phone number, what are the tender all about and the time limit for submitting a offer. The pressure from the supplier’s organisations to establish such a solution has been quite consistently over several months, and the resistance to such a solution from the local and regional communities has been strong as well. They fear that the workload – with a whole lot of offers to small tenders – does not make sense, and is not a good use of their resources.

The central government has, however, now decided to open up for a voluntary solution, probably from this summer. The details in the solution are not quite ready yet, but the new tender solutions is planned to be part of the existing Doffin service.