European Eproject proposal

Simplifying cross-border procurement

Gare de Lyon in Paris

An integrated electronic solution that will remove the barriers for public procurement across national borders. That is the objective of a comprehensive project proposal that was recently submitted to the EU Commission from an international consortium with participants from nine countries. The Norwegian eProcurement secretariat is the coordinating body for the proposal and the possible pilot project. The implementation of the solution across borders will capitalise on each nation’s strength/advantage in existing national systems and conjointly facilitate the enabling of an EU-wide interoperable solution for public eProcurement. If the solution proves successful, it may be taken into more permanent use across Europe.

The project is entitled “Pan-European Public Procurement On-Line”, abbreviated PEPPOL, and has been organised as a consortium. The objective of the PEPPOL project is to make it easier for European economic operators, in particular SME’s, from one country to respond to public procurement opportunities from awarding entities in any other country by using EU-wide implemented interoperable eProcurement solutions. The interoperable service solution of the PEPPOL project will be based on functional specifications and consist of a number of operational building blocks supporting the identified business requirements related to cross-border use of existing solutions for eSignature, Virtual Company Dossier, eCatalogues, eOrdering and eInvoicing. Building blocks regarding one topic may be modified without this necessarily having an impact on the others.

The PEPPOL consortium consists of 14 participants and a number of sub-contractors from nine different nations representing seven government administrations. The participants have wide-ranging experience and in-depth knowledge of electronic public procurement, based on their national or regional solutions in operational or advanced piloting phases covering the entire value chain of public procurement. To ensure EU-wide dissemination and pick-up of project results, a reference group has been established for the member states outside the consortium. Resources will also be set aside for the future enlargement of the consortium.

Work Packages

The PEPPOL project is organised in five functional Work Packages (WP1 to 5) and three horizontal Work Packages (WP6 to 8):

PEPPOL meeting in the French Ministry of Finance

• WP1 – eSignature, coordinated by City of Bremen, Germany, which was one of the first administrations to offer applications using eSignatures on a wide scale. The Guidelines to Common Specifications for Cross-border use of Public eProcurement- document states: “The lack of interoperability between the different national schemes for electronically signing tender documents is the single most important blocking factor to cross-border eProcurement”.
• WP2 – Virtual Company Dossier (VCD), coordinated by University of Koblenz, Germany. This coordinator has a leading role in BRITE (Business Register Interoperability Throughout Europe), and thus has experience relevant to setting up the VCD.
• WP3 – eCatalogues, coordinated by Consip S.p.A, Italy, which will contribute know-how on eCatalogues and its well established international experience to the consortium.
• WP4 – eOrdering, coordinated by ScotGov, Scotland. The WP4-coordinator will bring specific expertise to the project on eOrdering based on their 5-year experience that so far has resulted in the electronic handling of orders for more than 2 billion pounds.
• WP5 – eInvoicing, coordinated by National IT and Telecom Agency (NITA), Denmark. The NITA will contribute with the Danish eInvoicing experiences.”

Three horizontal projects

Additionally, there are three horizontal WPs: WP6 – Project Administration, coordinated by Ehandel.no, Norway; WP7 – Awareness, dissemination, consensus building and training, coordinated by Peppol.at, Austria; and WP8 – Solutions architecture, design and validation, coordinated by NITA, Denmark. In addition to the above countries, Finland, Hungary and Iceland are consortium members. Mr André Hoddevik, head of the Norwegian e-Procurement Secretariat, will serve as the coordinator for the proposal and the pilot project.