Procurement software package

Description

Prior Information Notice for the provision of a National eProcurement Platform (NEP) managed and hosted by a third party on their premises as a Software as a Service (SaaS). The Irish Government’s electronic tendering platform www.eTenders.gov.ie (eTenders) is a national facility for all public sector Contracting Authorities (CAs) to publish procurement opportunities (tenders) and contract award notices for goods, services and works. The eTenders platform is managed by the Office of Government Procurement (OGP) with day-to-day operations performed by a third party service provider on a Software as a Service (SaaS) basis. The platform is used by the public service including the OGP and its sourcing partners in the Health, Defence, Education and Local Government sectors; central government departments and agencies; local government and health sector organisations and by the wider public sector comprising semi-state organisations, both commercial and non-commercial, and voluntary and community groups that are funded by EU or State bodies. eTenders also provides an eSender service for all CAs where notices above the OJEU thresholds are transmitted automatically to the Tenders Electronic Daily (TED) system managed by the European Commission’s Publications Office. There is no charge to contracting CAs or EOs for use of the eTenders platform which is also freely available to the public to view notices published by public sector contracting authorities. Economic Operators (EOs) use eTenders to access public sector tender opportunities. They register their company details and profiles on the system, receive automatic alerts on potential opportunities and submit and manage tender responses online. There are new mandatory rules outlined in the EU Directives 2014/23/EC, 2014/24/EC and 2014/25/EC covering the use of electronic communications between CAs and EOs. These new rules include accessibility to Request for Tender (RFT) documents and response submissions. For the first time, electronic submission of tender responses will be mandatory with effect from October 2018. The eTenders platform currently has approximatly 147 000 registered entities — which is currently split as follows — 5 700 CAs and 141, 300 EOs. Each entity can have multiple users. All tender and contract award notices are classified as either OJEU (above the thresholds that require publication in the Official Journal of the European Union) or as Non-OJEU (below those thresholds and subject to national procurement rules). eTenders displays, on a daily basis, all Irish public sector procurement opportunities currently advertised in the OJEU as well as below OJEU threshold tenders. In 2015, 5 000 tender notices with a contract value of 7.3 billion EUR were published on eTenders. The current service provider carries out the maintenance, support and development functions required by the OGP on the eTenders platform and provides a helpdesk on system functionality for users. The contract with the current service provider was put in place in 2012 and expires in May 2020. The OGP intends to publish a contract notice in 2018 for the provision of a National eProcurement Platform (NEP) (‘the NEP Competition’) by a single service provider on a SaaS basis. This contract notice will have a requirement for a change control protocol allowing for additional services during the term of the contract as a consequence of new legislative, regulatory and policy requirements in relation to Public Procurement.