Valencia eProcurement scoping documents published

The European Commission supported FASTeTEN project has finalised the details of the deployment of the FAST bundle of services in Valencia, Spain, and has published three reports relating to the deployment:

 Electronic Workflow Process
 System Requirement Specification
 Software Design Definition

Background information about the Valencia pilot deployment was previously published on the FASTeTEN website.

In Valencia, the FAST bundle of services went live on the region’s eProcurement platform in April 2008. The Valencian deployment has been through several steps. First, a scoping exercise was carried out to define the current structure of the eProcurement portal to better understand where FAST would fit. The eProcurement service has been offered by the Valencian regional government (GVA) since 2004 but it is currently being redesigned to be compliant with EU directives (Directive 2004/18/EC) and new national legislation. The redesign includes the implementation of new eProcurement procedures as well new security mechanisms according to the guidelines provided by the European Commission under the Interchange of Data between Administrations programme (IDA).

The GVA portal embraces a range of procurement procedures: individual contracts (open procedures, restricted procedure); repetitive contracts (Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS), a fully electronic process for contracting authorities for making frequent purchases, which are generally available on the market and meet the requirements of the contracting authority, framework agreements); and extensions by electronic auction.

Following the scoping exercise, a workflow was defined and reviewed along with the data format definition of the eProcurement platform for open procedures, in order to include FAST functionalities. The electronic workflow addressed the functions of the system (functional workflow) and its technical aspects (technical workflow). Data format definitions dealt with business envelopes, headers, contract notice documentation, and tender documents.

Electronic workflow analysis was complemented by a definition of the system requirements for the steps that involve the use of FAST. FAST has developed proprietary applets, which are provided to local editors. The purpose of these applets is to help editors create FAST-compliant envelopes, with XML signatures. Nevertheless, their scope concerns generic actions and all business parts must be addressed by the application itself.

The examination of system requirements also address other key FAST services: interaction with the FAST proof server, integration of certificate validation services, and dealing with time-stamping and archiving services.

Once these studies had been carried out, a further exercise identified how the FAST bundle of services and the electronic workflow analysis could be best brought together. To address the workflow and the system requirements, several software components had to be developed or integrated into existing platforms and linked between them. These components addressed the system requirements as noted above: interaction with the FAST proof server, integration of certificate validation services, and dealing with time-stamping and archiving services. The third study (software design definition) described the integration of existing workflows and FAST services in detail.

Each step was open to review by the FASTeTEN potential deployers group, members of which were able to express their concerns about particular aspects of the pilot deployment, and to raise questions about possible future deployments in different contexts. In the Valencia case, this has been shown to be an effective approach.

Download the relevant documents by clicking below.