Brussels, 18/10/2010 (Agence Europe) - Obstacles to developing e-procurement have to be overcome, the European Commission says in its Green Paper, published on Monday 18 October. E-procurement accounts for only 5% of all public contracts, says the Commission, launching a public consultation which will run until 31 January 2011 to garner the points of view of the various stakeholders on how the EU can help member states speed up and facilitate public procurement procedures.
E-procurement is a general term referring to the use of electronic communication and transaction processing rather than paper throughout the whole process. Electronic procedures have to be put in place for each of the various stages of the public procurement process: publication of the call for tender, sending out specifications, submission of tenders, assessment, award of contracts, ordering, invoicing and payment.
According to the Commission, increased use of e-procurement procedures will make public contracts more accessible and more transparent, will bring benefits for individual procurement procedures (reduction of administrative costs and speeding up the contract award procedure) and benefits in terms of public contract management. Furthermore, the potential for integration of EU government procurement will be increased.
Not cheap. Electronic procurement will require investment throughout the whole process to put in place the necessary capabilities and to be able to manage the switch-over. National and regional investment costs, whether for setting up electronic portals or more complete options, vary between €0.5 million and €5 million. Maintenance costs will range from a few thousand to several million euro. The communication can be found at http: //ec.europa.eu/internal_market/consultations/2010/e-procurement_en.htm (L.C./transl.rt)