scope:

eNotification

This profile supports a process of submitting procurement notices by a Contracting Authority to a Publication Body. It is intended to support transmission of electronic documents for processing in semi-automated processes by the receiver. The legal requirements that were taken into account are requirements from European legislation, in particular the EU directives, mentioned in Clause 5 of this profile. The intended scope for this profile is Government to Government (G2G) and Government to Business (G2B), depending on legal requirements for publication, to support Business to Government (B2G) contracting.

The transactions, specified in this profile are intended to be exchanged between the application systems of Contracting Authorities and Publication Bodies. This means that it is expected that the parties have connected their systems to the internet, and that they have middleware in place to enable them to send and receive the transactions in a secure way, using an agreed syntax.

The content model of the transactions can also be used in platforms or portals, so that these platforms are based on the same information and process models, which makes them more interoperable. Even if platforms are not technically interoperable, the content model facilitates understanding the tendering documents and to participate in the publication process.

eNotification as a sub process of eTendering

eNotification refers to the process of notifying procurement stakeholders of a procurement procedure, Generally, this is done by means of an official publication published in an official gazette or in a newspaper. The messages used in this process, and particularly the actual notice, are prepared and exchanged electronically. The actual publication may be available in an electronic medium as well as on paper.

The process is centred on the notice publisher. This notice publisher may receive the notice directly from the notice originator or from another notice submitter, which may be part of a publisher network. He also may submit the notice to another publisher himself. In the context of publication dissemination, the publisher may also provide processed publication information to other service providers such as information brokers, using the data to provide specific (value added) data services. The publisher may also exchange information with other official authorities for the purpose of, e.g., public market supervision or statistics.

While the basic role of the publisher may apply to any newspaper, other roles and functions are often restricted to official gazettes. These gazettes are also often responsible to ensure a formal verification of the notices in respect of legislative or other requirements in vigour. Official gazettes may also have the role to receive information exempted from publication (e.g. due to confidential content) used for notification to a supervising authority. I.e. eNotification also covers notification of authorities in the context of public procurement notices, e.g. for transparency and control reasons.

A key aspect of eNotification with regard to a tender procedure is that there is no direct transaction between Buyer (Contracting Authority) and Seller (Economic Operator). The contact between the Contracting Authority and the potentially interested Economic Operators as stakeholders of the process is created via the publication. All transactions of the process are done between the publisher and other parties,

The eNotification profile is, therefore, addressed to all those who exchange procurement notices for publication and further information processing purposes, such as contracting authorities, publishers, print shops, information brokers or monitoring or statistical services.

One of the key aspects is the distinction that should be made between the part of the message containing the actual notice to be published and the information to control the publication process itself. The latter includes the communication parties, type and summary content of the notice and its publication status.