Project Context and objectives

The PROCURE project aims at enabling the dissemination of the e-tendering platform used in Burgundy in others European regions, to create a first interregional network of shared e-procurement platforms.
By strengthening access to information and making possible direct e-tendering and e-bidding, these interregional shared platforms would simplify both the work of persons in charge of public procurement and local economic operators (especially SMEs) with public bodies.
PROCURE also explores cross-borders issues linked to interoperability and legal framework in compliance with the Lisbon Agenda.
Weak dissemination and lack of competition are the main problems that the public entities have to tackle while organizing calls for bids. Also, many companies and especially the smallest of them are often prone to not participate in the public supplies because of fragmented tenders and complicated paperwork. However, the communication technologies allow a new approach to the public purchasing, leveraging on the dematerialization of procurement procedures.
The PROCURE project has for primary objective to adapt, develop and deploy the existing Burgundy public procurement dematerialization service (www.e-bourgogne.fr). By launching new regional e-procurement websites, this solution will provide a wide range of new useful tools such as a trans-European functionality or a space to share best practices.
To ensure the effective adoption of the solution by local actors, the deployment will be preceded by studies on national law and on the market issues in each region. Then, all appropriate channels will be used to communicate with the targeted groups. Furthermore, experiments are conducted simultaneously in all of the regions, but with local management providing speedy feedback and adjustments which will allow the PROCURE solution to remain as close as possible to local market expectations.

Services to be offered

In the context of a nationwide experiment carried out at regional level, French State entrusted the Burgundy region, in partnership with the Deposit Office, to carry out the national trial of a platform designed in the long term to carry services provided by all bodies in charge of public service assignments in Burgundy.
Since January 2005, a first version of this platform has provided a public procurement dematerialization service which is used by more than 900 public bodies in Burgundy.
This service, carried out under GPL license (Free & Open Source Software), covers a wide range of functions, including the publication of consultation files, electronic receipt of tenders, dematerialized convening of market commission, alert services for new consultations for businesses, etc. New functions are currently being designed and tested (dematerialization of market commission executions, trade indicator monitoring, etc.).
The service has been a great success with businesses. So far, more than 10.000 businesses (most of them small and middle-sized businesses) have used it, generating a total of nearly 170.000 downloads (20.000 consultation files have been published since the 1st of January 2005), and more than 6.000 electronic tenders.
The success of the service can be explained by:

• The numerous functionalities and options, and the added value provided by the service for businesses and particularly to small and middle-sized businesses (through single point access to all public markets in Burgundy, alert tools in the case of publication of new consultations, the possibility of registering certain tender documents once and for all and of organizing SMEs' public data and legal documents in a “secure virtual registry”),
• Set up of a comprehensive education plan for all regional public buyers.

Others services will come soon:

• Digitisation of the transmission of accounting information between LAs and central administration services (experimentation currently in progress),
• Deployment of an electronic portfolio to e-sign the LAs decisions and meeting reports and dematerialization of the transmission of theses documents to the central administration services and (end of 2007),
• Services dedicated to citizens (end of 2008).

The technical platform and associated service (hosting, hotline and maintenance) is presently provided by a French service provider (Atexo).
As the IT solution is open source, released under the GNU General Public License, a European structure can be created in order to gather and redistribute evolutions carried out by the different users all over Europe and check for the global coherence of the solution.
Main technologies used: PHP /MySQL /OpenSSL /NuSOAP

Areas of deployment

In order to carry out the field market validation, 5 test sites have been chosen for their complementary features

Central Bohemia

Central Bohemia is a newcomer in the public purchasing dematerialization area. The main purpose of this pilot is to test the difficulty to adapt and deploy the service “from scratch”, even though the scope of the deployed functionalities is limited. This pilot prepares the deployment of the solution in other eastern member states.

Piedmont

Regione Piemonte (Italy) is a region having a deep experience regarding public procurement dematerialization; it owns an e-tendering solution managed by CSI-Piemonte since 2003. Piedmont Region has already implemented solutions covering several parts of the procurement chain from notice publication to awarding of call for tenders. The Procure project will be an opportunity to implement cross border capacity for the solution and improve deployment strategy towards SMEs and PAs.

Uddevalla

Uddevalla is also a mature region regarding public purchasing digitization and has used an e-ordering solution supplied by Marakanda for several years. This pilot will be the opportunity to add cross border functionalities to the Uddevalla e-tendering solution and experiment deployment strategy toward SMEs. The feedback from Uddevalla's experience regarding e-ordering will also be used to find out to what extent such a service could be deployed in France in the future.

Brittany

In Brittany, workgroups involving public buyers from various public organizations and local Chambers of Commerce have already been set up and a public contract has been signed to implement an e-tendering solution around April 2007. This pilot will therefore mainly be the opportunity to validate a deployment strategy toward SMEs: creation of tutorials, setting-up of a call center, push communication strategy, etc.

Guadeloupe

Guadeloupe is a small geographical territory with few public organizations and private companies. It therefore provides the opportunity to deploy, in a well-known legal context (France), all the functionalities expected in the large majority of public organizations and local companies, well organized through dynamic local consular agencies willing to get involved with the project.

Impact

• Continuation of the deployment of the e-procurement in other EU regions and of the deployment of e-government through the concept of a shared regional platform offering e-services to local authorities,
• Experimentation of cross-border e-procurement and cross-border recognition of e-signature,
• Contribution to the standardization of public procurement procedures and processes in Europe,
• Contribution to a better participation of the SMEs in public procurement - Input to the Pan European eProcurement On-Line project (PEPPOL)

Future perspectives

PROCURE can play a significant role in fostering:

• European market maturity to adopt and deploy in a large scale a shared e-procurement solution
• Ways to tackle e-signature acknowledgement between MS and to increase public procurement between MS
• Ways to deploy e-procurement and more broadly e-government services in LAs and to gather LAs around a shared tool
• Ways to deploy e-procurement in companies (especially SMEs) using innovative tools (e-learning for instance)
• Ways to encourage cooperation between MS public buyers and encourage standardization of procurement processes (even below EU thresholds) in the MS

There are several possible opportunities of legal evolutions beyond the PROCURE project as:

• To enable cross-border e-signature
• To ease cross-border in standardizing processes
• To fully complete CE directive transposition

Duration of the Project

October 2007 – March 2009

Funding source

Public funding EU, Public funding regional, Private sector

Project size

Total Cost €3.93m

Links

• Website
• eTEN portal
• ePractice portal

Themes

• e-tendering
• e-procurement
• smes

Contacts: