IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

E-invoicing is an important step towards paperless public administration (e-government) in Europe - one of the priorities of the Digital Agenda - and offers the potential for significant economic as well as environmental benefits. The Commission estimates that the adoption of e-invoicing in public procurement across the EU could generate savings of up to €2.3 billion.

The strategic objective of the eProcurement Forum, which together with IDABC promoted the production of this document, is to make the eProcurement experts aware about what is happening in the complex European scenario.

This new version of Open e-PRIOR includes a web portal for eInvoicing that allows SMEs and individuals to submit electronic invoices to their customers who have Open e-PRIOR installed.

Governments across the world have always known that e-procurement holds enormous potential. Yet with both governments and industry maintaining their own individual standards, each e-business platform becomes an individual island.

While computing technologies have advanced by leaps and bounds, e-procurement and e-business still function on old-fashioned Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) that is dominated by IBM mainframes and pre-Internet protocols. Moreover, businesses still depend on exchanging hardcopies of mostly PDFs, which are not interoperable, on say, Microsoft, SAP or Oracle systems.

The Green Paper identifies obstacles to faster take-up of e-procurement and assesses the risks that divergent national approaches present for cross-border participation in on-line procurement. It sets out options for overcoming these challenges including regulatory incentives, standardisation and inter operability of systems.

The Commissioner gave a speech at the end of the conference saying that modernising procurement should include simplification of the rules and lowering of the threshold for small and medium-sized businesses.

This step further in the dematerialisation of public procurement is expected to stimulate ICT investment by bidding companies while pushing contracting authorities to either acquire the necessary equipment individually or to team up with each other to find common solutions.

The establishment of an electronic procurement system to enhance transparency, efficiency and credibility of the country’s sloppy procurement processes has been hampered by funding shortfalls from external development partners, three years after the project was mooted, 263Chat Business has learnt.

In 2017, Zimbabwe contracted a British consulting firm, Crown Agency with the funding support of World Bank to develop an electronic procurement strategy which was completed in 2018 as a precursor to the setting up of an electronic system.

The Government Procurement Service has put all planned IT frameworks "on pause" while it reviews their effectiveness.

"Our ICT framework agreements already remove excessive procurement procedures, but we want to make sure they are achieving the best savings and are easier and faster for both buyers and suppliers, including SMEs," said Cabinet Office parliamentary secretary Chloe Smith.

"We want to ensure GPS framework agreements are driving the greatest competition, and achieving a wider range of suppliers, including SMEs, in the ICT market," said Bill Crothers, government's chief procurement officer. "I have therefore asked David Shields to assess how we are using these frameworks so that we can achieve the most effective results for everyone.

A recent report (25-page / 877KB PDF) by Scotland's public spending watchdog, Audit Scotland, recommended that the Scottish Government carry out a "strategic review of current ICT skills" that exist within central Government and "identify" and plug any "gaps". As part of the review the Scottish Government should consider whether it would be "beneficial" to "develop centralised pools of expertise" that "public bodies" could tap into.

Rigby is also chair of the government's green ICT delivery unit (GDU), a cross-departmental, pan-public sector body charged with driving both efficiencies and savings from public-sector IT.

"The GDU is all about pulling together the policy for government around green ICT. We are also there to share knowledge," said Rigby. The GDU was responsible for developing the 'Greening Government' ICT strategy, which is linked to the government's cloud strategy, end-user devices and capability strategies.

The government has published plans to overhaul its procurement of private sector services, including its IT contracts.

The data published forecasts potential contracts over £5 million, worth a total of £50 billion and with over 150 potential opportunities, which the Cabinet Office said gives an “unprecedented view” into the government’s expected future requirements.

Lincolnshire county council is to launch a procurement exercise later this year to investigate the provision of various support services, including ICT systems.

A pre-tender document issued by the council says the estimated value of the deal is between £100m and £150m over five years.

The National Police Procurement Hub goes live today with coppers in Lincolnshire the first to implement the "Amazon" styled e-commerce platform.

The portal set up by ProcServe with the backing of the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA), allows fuzz to buy IT, body armour and vehicles from 500 suppliers – though it was unable to list them.

This is the first phase of the roll-out, with all 43 forces in England and Wales due to be using the system by June 2012.

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT), has launched a study into ICT procurement by the public sector to determine the “degree of competition” between dominant providers, and decide whether the government is providing value for money for the tax player. It will also evaluate the role of SMBs in the existing procurement system.

Fair competition is essential for public sector ICT contracts – in the past two years, the government hasspent around £13.8 billion on technology goods and services.

eProcurement Scotl@nd encourages a joined-up approach to purchasing by government in Scotland. It brings local government, the NHS and central government together to deliver savings and efficiencies in procurement including eliminating much of the traditional paper-chase.

This was disclosed in a statement issued by the e-Government Authority Bahrain in light of the 8th GCC e-Governments’ heads committee meeting held in Kuwait.

"The aim of these efforts is to promote cooperation among the gulf states with regard to information technology and communications," said the e-Government Authority Bahrain in a statement.