Legal package released

Breakthrough for e-procurement

Shortly before Easter 2006 the Norwegian Government released its long awaited legal package with updated rules for future public procurement. Hereafter this event will be remembered as the day when electronic means in public procurement was fully adopted.

The legal package consists of two parts. One is a proposal for certain changes in the Norwegian Public Procurement Act. The other one is the revised provisions of this act and for the utilities.

The new rules was implemented from 1st of January 2007.

The changes proposed in the Act are mainly due to the need to obtain tools to penalise any public body that seriously breaks the rules for public procurement. The Government proposes a penalty fee of up to 15 per cent of the value of the contract. It is important to note that the fee can only be imposed on a public body that wilfully oversteps the rules and regulations for basic principles of competition. According to a proposal to the Storting the authority to deal with such penalties should rest with the Board of Complaints (Kofa).

E-procurement

The revised provisions open up for electronic means throughout the entire procurement process, be it ordinary public bodies or the utilities sector. This means that the use of e-procurement is a fully accepted alternative to the traditional way of doing business. The eProcurement secretariat is already well on its way to test out different tools, promoting e-business and participating in a Northern Europe-cooperation to deploy e-invoices.

The aim of the Government is to use the public procurement rules to fight corruption and to guard and maintain the important principles of an open procurement process. Consequently they propose that the new Act should require a high ethical standard in the public procurement process. These provisions set forth that public bodies must be obliged to register all important steps and decisions throughout the procurement process. This applies to all contracts to a value of NOK 100 000 (€ 12 500) and above.