| Abstrakt: |
The present paper begins by outlining the political context resulting from the Digital Agenda for Europe1 and the major European-wide initiatives in the area of eProcurement. It describes how the European Commission has cooperated with the Pan-European Public Procurement Online (PEPPOL) project in order to facilitate the cross-border exchange of eProcurement documents, such as catalogues of goods or services, orders and invoices, between European public administrations and suppliers of any size. The paper explains that, while the European Commission's main objective was the promotion of cross-border eProcurement as a matter of policy, its own experience as a public purchaser in a wide range of economic sectors and with suppliers of varying sizes and operating from different countries has been instrumental to understand the needs of these suppliers and of the contracting authorities they work for. In this context, it presents the e-PRIOR initiative and reports on its main achievements, as well as Open e-PRIOR --the open source version of e-PRIOR--, which covers the same functionality and could help public administrations in Europe (and, potentially, other regions of the world) to take the leap towards eProcurement. Finally, it refers to the next steps and, in particular, on moving from post-awarding to pre-awarding eProcurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
