Background

Efficient public procurement based on standards is at the top of the European Agenda. The public sector with its big buying volume and complex constraints offers a high economic potential to spread large scale adoption, and enhance speed and efficiency of European e-procurement.

In addition, advances in interoperability between government and private sectors offer an important opportunity to further broaden adoption of e-procurement standards.

Public sector authorities that have already made the transition to e-procurement commonly report savings between 5 and 20%. Given the size of the total procurement market in the EU, each 5% saved could return around €100 billion to the public purse.

However, e-procurement adoption remains fragmented, due to diversified approaches taken at regional and national levels. It is used in only 5-10% of procurement procedures across the EU.

Against this backdrop, the CEN BII Workshop was established in May 2007. The Workshop activities aimed to facilitate the use of e-procurement and e-invoicing standards in Europe by buyers and sellers, with a focus on the public sector.