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The term Public eProcurement (" electronic procurement" in the public sector) refers, in
Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borderin ...
, Ukraine, Europe and Canada, to the use of electronic means in conducting a
public procurement Government procurement or public procurement is the procurement of goods, services and works on behalf of a public authority, such as a government agency. Amounting to 12 percent of global GDP in 2018, government procurement accounts for a subs ...
procedure for the purchase of
good In most contexts, the concept of good denotes the conduct that should be preferred when posed with a choice between possible actions. Good is generally considered to be the opposite of evil and is of interest in the study of ethics, morality, ph ...
s, works or services. eProcurement compared to normal procurement allows greater transparency, better competition and easier communication for all parties.


Benefits of public eProcurement

Benefits of Public eProcurement can differ from benefits of
electronic purchasing Electronic may refer to: *Electronics, the science of how to control electric energy in semiconductor * ''Electronics'' (magazine), a defunct American trade journal *Electronic storage, the storage of data using an electronic device *Electronic co ...
in
private sector The private sector is the part of the economy, sometimes referred to as the citizen sector, which is owned by private groups, usually as a means of establishment for profit or non profit, rather than being owned by the government. Employment The p ...
. Governments objective is not only cost efficiency and obtaining the best value-for-money because of a high impact of public procurement on the market and the society. Commonly discussed benefits of the eProcurement in the
public sector The public sector, also called the state sector, is the part of the economy composed of both public services and public enterprises. Public sectors include the public goods and governmental services such as the military, law enforcement, infra ...
are as follows: ·       Transaction costs reduction – Electronic automation of processes is supposed to replace various phases of procurement processed manually. It can significantly reduce wage costs, printing costs and make communication much easier for both contractor and supplier.GURÍN, Martin. Elektronické zadávání veřejných zakázek: cesta ke transparentnosti a bezkorupčnosti?. Prague, 2017.Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Sociological Studies. There have been various studies estimating these cost savings. Potential administrative cost savings estimates are between 58 – 70% in IT purchases. ·      
Barriers to entry In theories of competition in economics, a barrier to entry, or an economic barrier to entry, is a fixed cost that must be incurred by a new entrant, regardless of production or sales activities, into a market that incumbents do not have or hav ...
reduction – Electronic auction is a significant factor increasing probability that the tender will be awarded to a SME company. It is also a significant factor increasing amount of offers in the tender. These aspects might be caused by smaller requirements of electronic tenders on companies capacity. ·       Corruption control – eProcurement is considered to be suitable tool to prevent corruption as it can make tender process easier to monitor. Electronic tools are also believed to reduce amount of mistakes or errors made by humans involved.


Phases

The term of the Electronic Public Procurement can be defined as the usage of
e-Government E-government (short for electronic government) is the use of technological communications devices, such as computers and the Internet, to provide public services to citizens and other persons in a country or region. E-government offers new ...
platform over the electronic resources (
Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
and Web-based applications) to conduct transactions for
purchasing Purchasing is the process a business or organization uses to acquire goods or services to accomplish its goals. Although there are several organizations that attempt to set standards in the purchasing process, processes can vary greatly betwee ...
the products and services from suppliers to authority's buyers. The following sub-phases of the electronic public procurement process could be identified: * eSourcing: preparatory activities conducted by the contracting authority/entity to collect and reuse information for the preparation of a call; potential bidders may be contacted, if admitted by the legal rules, by electronic means to provide quotations or manifest interest. * eNoticing: advertisement of calls for tenders through the
publication To publish is to make content available to the general public.Berne Con ...
of appropriate contract notices in electronic format in the relevant
Official Journal A government gazette (also known as an official gazette, official journal, official newspaper, official monitor or official bulletin) is a periodical publication that has been authorised to publish public or legal notices. It is usually establis ...
(national/EU); electronic access to tender documents and specifications as well as additional related documents are provided in a non-discriminatory way. * eAccess: electronic access to tender documents and specifications as well support to
economic An economy is an area of the production, distribution and trade, as well as consumption of goods and services. In general, it is defined as a social domain that emphasize the practices, discourses, and material expressions associated with the p ...
operators for the preparation of an offer, e.g. clarifications, questions and answers. * eSubmission: submission of offers in electronic format to the contracting authority/entity, which is able to receive, accept and process it in compliance with the
legal Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...
requirements. * eTendering: is the union of the eAccess and eSubmission phases. * eAwarding: opening and evaluation of the electronic tenders received, and award of the contract to the best offer in terms of the lowest price or economically most advantageous bid. * eContract: conclusion, enactment and monitoring of a contract / agreement through electronic means between the contracting authority/entity and the winning tenderer. *eOrders: preparation and issuing of an electronic order by the contracting authority/entity and its acceptance by the contractor. *eOrder Status: preparation and delivery of status information against the eOrder. * eInvoicing: preparation and delivery of an
invoice An invoice, bill or tab is a commercial document issued by a seller to a buyer relating to a sale transaction and indicating the products, quantities, and agreed-upon prices for products or services the seller had provided the buyer. Payment ...
in electronic format. * ePayment:
electronic payment An e-commerce payment system (or an electronic payment system) facilitates the acceptance of electronic payment for offline transfer, also known as a subcomponent of electronic data interchange (EDI), e-commerce payment systems have become incre ...
of the ordered goods, services or works.


eInvoicing

eInvoicing allows an invoice to be sent and received by the customer electronically. eInvoicing is currently defined in multiple ways. A simple search finds 3 simple variations: “an invoice issued, received and processed electronically”, “an invoice sent by electronic means to the recipient”, and “an invoice received by the
customer In sales, commerce, and economics, a customer (sometimes known as a client, buyer, or purchaser) is the recipient of a good, service, product or an idea - obtained from a seller, vendor, or supplier via a financial transaction or exchange for ...
electronically”. Driving a single strategy requires a single definition; a common
language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...
. The best definition should be customer-centric. The same common language divides the tiers of eInvoicing based on cash management impacts. * Tier 3 reduces delivery time (e.g.
email Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic (digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...
delivery of
pdf Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems ...
versions of invoices) * Tier 2 reduces delivery time and digitizes the data for easier management by customers (e.g.
electronic files A computer file is a computer resource for recording data in a computer storage device, primarily identified by its file name. Just as words can be written to paper, so can data be written to a computer file. Files can be shared with and transfe ...
( XML, EDI, flat, etc.) which match the sellers sales invoice) * Tier 1 reduces delivery time, digitizes data and reduces reconciliation time (e.g. electronic files (xml, edi, flat, etc.) which match the customers purchase order, or web invoicing solutions).


Enabling systems

To successfully conduct electronic procurement across
borders A border is a geographical boundary. Border, borders, The Border or The Borders may also refer to: Arts, entertainment and media Film and television * ''Border'' (1997 film), an Indian Hindi-language war film * ''Border'' (2018 Swedish film), ...
, eProcurement systems rely on some “key-enablers” * e
Signature A signature (; from la, signare, "to sign") is a handwritten (and often stylized) depiction of someone's name, nickname, or even a simple "X" or other mark that a person writes on documents as a proof of identity and intent. The writer of a ...
:
data In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete values that convey information, describing quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted. ...
in electronic form which are attached to or
logic Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premises ...
ally associated with other electronic data and which serve as a method of
authentication Authentication (from ''authentikos'', "real, genuine", from αὐθέντης ''authentes'', "author") is the act of proving an assertion, such as the identity of a computer system user. In contrast with identification, the act of indicati ...
with regard to this data. * eIdentity: dynamic collection of all attributes, in electronic format, related to a specific entity (
citizen Citizenship is a "relationship between an individual and a state to which the individual owes allegiance and in turn is entitled to its protection". Each state determines the conditions under which it will recognize persons as its citizens, and ...
,
enterprise Enterprise (or the archaic spelling Enterprize) may refer to: Business and economics Brands and enterprises * Enterprise GP Holdings, an energy holding company * Enterprise plc, a UK civil engineering and maintenance company * Enterpri ...
, or object) which serve to ascertain a specific identity. * eAttestations (Virtual
Company A company, abbreviated as co., is a legal entity representing an association of people, whether natural, legal or a mixture of both, with a specific objective. Company members share a common purpose and unite to achieve specific, declared go ...
Dossier): set of certificates and attestations, in electronic format, to be provided by a supplier to prove compliance with the
selection Selection may refer to: Science * Selection (biology), also called natural selection, selection in evolution ** Sex selection, in genetics ** Mate selection, in mating ** Sexual selection in humans, in human sexuality ** Human mating strate ...
and exclusion criteria of a
procurement Procurement is the method of discovering and agreeing to terms and purchasing goods, services, or other works from an external source, often with the use of a tendering or competitive bidding process. When a government agency buys goods or serv ...
procedure. * eCatalogues: electronic supplier catalogue prospect uses used to prepare and submit offers or parts of them. * e
Archiving An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials – in any medium – or the physical facility in which they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or ...
: use of electronic means for long-term preservation of
document A document is a written, drawn, presented, or memorialized representation of thought, often the manifestation of non-fictional, as well as fictional, content. The word originates from the Latin ''Documentum'', which denotes a "teaching" or ...
s in digitalised format, ensuring that they can be easily retrieved without conversions.


In Practice


Portugal

Beginning in 2009 Portugal implemented mandatory use of electronic systems for public procurement. The government has continued to utilize more pilot programs to continue the implementation of the program in Portugal and to establish the e-procurement process until the contract is awarded in a public procurement deal.


Ukraine

In Ukraine the government established the Prozorro system in 2014. It was a major innovation for the government as they switched to a more transparent e-procurement system based on OpenProcurement platform.


Germany

In Germany, e-procurement solutions must be used for many public procurement procedures. The data generated by these solutions is rarely analyzed because of the "complexity of the technological environment, the need to improve visibility of procurement information and enhance systematic data collection". For instance, the Bundesrechnungshof admonished that the German Defense Ministry procured 84% of its goods and services outside of its designated e-procurement system in 2013.{{Cite web, last=Bundesrechnungshof, date=2015, title=Bemerkung Nr. 6 zum Einzelplan 14 Bundesministerium der Verteidigung (BMVg), url=https://www.bundesrechnungshof.de/de/veroeffentlichungen/produkte/bemerkungen-jahresberichte/jahresberichte/2015-weitere-pruefungsergebnisse/einzelplanbezogene-pruefungsergebnisse/bundesministerium-der-verteidigung/2015-bemerkungen-weitere-pruefungsergebnisse-nr-06-daten-aus-it-system-der-bundeswehr-fuer-einkaufsanalyse-kaum-verwertbar/@@download/langfassung_pdf, url-status=live, access-date=3 January 2022, website=Bundesrechnungshof


Sources

* Most information on European public procurement can be found at th
European Commission
web site. * Information about Public e-Procurement system in Ukraine - Prozorro


References

Public eProcurement