Public e-Procurement Interoperability in the EU (Case Study)

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Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Sähkötekniikan korkeakoulu | Master's thesis

Date

2013-12-16

Department

Major/Subject

Networking Technology

Mcode

S3029

Degree programme

TLT - Master’s Programme in Communications Engineering

Language

en

Pages

87 + 9

Series

Abstract

The European Union’s “Digital Agenda for Europe, 2020” aims at 50% penetration of electronic procurement in the EU. It also targets to achieve full e-procurement by the mid- 2016. However, considering the current use of e-procurement which stands just at 2% across the border, it seems quite challenging to achieve this target. In the present hard financial times, there is pressure to utilize public budget in efficient and transparent manner. There is potential saving of 50 Billion euros with the use of public e-procurement in the EU. The biggest hurdle in achieving targeted e-procurement penetration in the EU is interaction between different EU systems. Interconnectivity may help us but interoperability is the real solution. However, achieving interoperability is not easy when there are several Member States involved. Each of them having existing infrastructure and closed networks. Several projects have been initiated by the European Commission to solve this issue. PEPPOL is one of the funded projects by the European Commission providing large scale interoperable pilot solutions to the pre and post-award phases of e-procurement processes. In this thesis, we study PEPPOL as case study for the interoperability. PEPPOL has been analyzed and evaluated to get answer whether it covers all the aspects required for e-procurement interoperability. Also it is investigated whether PEPPOL’s deliverables are technically sound and suitable for the purpose. We have found that PEPPOL is right step in the correct direction. However, there are certain short-comings in PEPPOL’s transport infrastructure and e-procurement tools. The future work is more focused on public organizations than SMEs which are major catalysts to derive innovation and competitiveness.

Description

Supervisor

Ott, Jörg

Thesis advisor

Peltola, Juhani

Keywords

public e-procurement, cross border e-procurement, e-procurement interoperability, SMEs barriers to e-procurement, PEPPOL

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