1st European Conference on ePublic Procurement (ECPP) and 1st Exhibition of European ePlatforms

More than 17 % of European GDP is due to public procurement and hence priority should be given to improve adopted practices and achieve results with the objective of meeting the new challenges of financial stability and sustainable growth of the European Union.

ePublic procurement can play a strategic role in order to:

a) generate public savings through improved sourcing and more effective competition between suppliers;
b) increase transparency and fair decision making to award public contracts;
c) help SMEs to participate in public markets;
d) stimulate innovation and the development of eMarket places;
e) promote a low-carbon society and more sustainable growth.

The European Commission proposed new Directives for Public Procurement in December 2011 introducing mandatory ePublic procurement after 2016 (including eTendering) and the approval of these new Directives is expected before the conference is held in Barcelona.

The dissemination of e-public procurement seems feasible due to the increasing market of ePlatforms offering procurement services as SaaS (Software as a Service) supported by more robust and mature ICT and pursuing the ‘cloud computing’ paradigm.

This explains the opportunity to organise, for the first time, a European conference on ePublic procurement covering the wide range of problems and disciplines required to understand and master ePublic procurement.

The objectives of this 1st European Conference on ePublic Procurement and 1st Exhibition of European ePlatforms are:

• Discussing the implications of the single digital market on public procurement;
• Presenting the new advances of eProcurement available through Software as a Service (SaaS);
• Discussing the role of eProcurement to improve the management of each organisation;
• Identifying major macro-economic benefits due to the dissemination of ePublic procurement;
• Discussing alternative strategies to simplify and overcome eProcurement obstacles;
• Analysing the new European Directives for ePublic procurement;
• Presenting eProcurement impacts on innovation and on SMEs access to public markets;
• Proposing new initiatives to increase cross-border public procurement;
• An exhibition of ‘best-of-breed’ services of ePlatforms is open during the whole day.

Registration can be performed online, while information on the conference programme may be found here.

Event email: eprocurement.conference@gmail.com / opet@opet.pt