Survey of National Catalogue of Standards for ICT Procurement

April 20, 2016, Source : European Commission, www.ec.europa.eu, Procurement Forum, www.procurement-forum.eu

DG CONNECT and GD GROWTH have commissioned a study to establish and launch a

European Catalogue of ICT Standards for public procurement.

The objective of this European Catalogue is to provide a one-stop-shop at the EU level to support and guide public procurers when referring to ICT standards and technical specification in their call for tenders. As part of this study we are inviting those involved in public procurement activities within Member States to complete a survey to collect their views on the content and operation of this future European Catalogue. Those interested in contributing can access the European Catalogue Survey here: https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/EuropeanCatalogueofStandards

Additional information pertaining to this project can also be found on the European Catalogue of Standards for Procurement Joinup Community page: https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/european_catalogue/home

Those wishing to join this community are invited and encouraged to do so.

Analysis, Establishment, Launch and Operation of a European Catalogue of Standards for ICT Procurement

The objective of the European Catalogue is to provide a one-stop-shop at the EU level to support and guide public procurers when referring to ICT standards and profiles of standards in their call for tenders. This should help drive the adoption of European standards, while ensuring progressive convergence on the use of ICT standards by public procurers, increasing interoperability and reducing market fragmentation.

The challenges the European Catalogue is seeking to addressing include:

• The risk of vendor lock-in with proprietary solutions
• A lack of interoperability of ICT solutions
• A lack of coordination on ICT standards adoption
• A fragmented EU market
• A lack of clarity for industry on which standards to adopt

For the initial version of the prototype of the European Catalogue, four domains have been selected. These are:

a) eGovernment/eBusiness
b) Intelligent Transport Systems
c) Cloud Computing
d) Energy Saving Smart Appliances for Buildings

Key Actions

To analyse existing national catalogues of standards for ICT procurement and, based on these analyses, to develop and propose governance and maintenance processes for a future EU Catalogue of Standards.
To develop and propose an adoption process to publish the recommended standards and specifications in the EU catalogue.

What is the expected outcome?

These activities aim at scouting existing adoption methodologies within Member States or at the EU level, through the identification of use cases for each of the 4 selected domains. Using this information, the team will develop a prototype for an EU Catalogue of standards, populating it with the sample information collected and validated during the project.

Can you contribute?

To be successful we will require different forms of assistance from collaborators across both the EU and EFTA throughout the lifecycle of the project. We are seeking to form a community gathering together: those involved in public procurement, those involved in the selection and assessment of ICT standards for national catalogues, policy makers, academics, and industry representatives.

The team is currently looking for specific contributions for two areas of research:

(1) The identification of contacts within national procurement from the following five countries, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Netherlands and the United Kingdom to participate in a short online survey to collect information on procurement practices and the use of national catalogues.
If you are working within these five countries and wish to participate in this survey please contact Timothy Mitchener-Nissen tim.nissen@trilateralresearch.com for a copy of the survey.

(2) The identification of use-cases within the selected domains
The team is working to identify examples of existing solutions in the form of use-cases that can be studied in depth, to identify possible specifications or profiles, which will be used to populate the prototype of the EU catalogue.
Each use case should be relatable to the four selected domains, and be able to:
a) Explain the business need behind the decision to implement the solution;
b) Describe the scenarios of implementation;
c) Define the key components and references.

If you have potential use-cases, please contact Pietro Costanzo p.costanzo@formit.org with your suggested cases.