Policy Makers

The CEN BII initiative put EU policies into action by gathering and implementing business and legal requirements for interoperability in public procurement, through commonly agreed specifications.

“Weaknesses in standard-setting, public procurement and coordination between European public authorities prevent digital services from working across borders as easily as they should.”*

Member States and the Commission are working to prevent the emergence of these barriers and the resulting market fragmentation by getting greater interoperability of public IT systems throughout the EU.

The BII specifications** have been used in several EU countries.

The BII Workshop provided European policy makers with:

  • the bridge to a wide user community that embeds the resulting policy requirements into e-Procurement specifications – the BII profiles – to align processes and tools;
  • opportunities to monitor standardisation developments in public procurement and maturity of the related standards which can be referenced in EU policies and Directives;
  • a community of experts from government agencies, private industry groups and universities to exchange views on practices and actions needed for further e-procurement harmonisation.
  • practical knowledge about how standardisation requirements included in EU Directives on e-procurement can be fulfilled.

*Source: Digital Agenda for Europe, Pillar II

**CEN BII2 published 5 CEN Workshop Agreements (CWAs). For more information please see CEN WS/BII2.