Every year in the EU, over 250 000 public authorities spend around €2 trillion (around 13.6% of GDP) on the purchase of services, works and supplies. EU directives govern procurement contracts above certain thresholds to ensure the transparency of the procedures.
Notices of such contracts must be published on the European Tenders Electronic Daily (TED) portal. Notices of contracts below the EU thresholds are spread across the national or regional level in different formats, which makes them difficult or impossible to re-use. In other words, public procurement is rich in data but poor in making it work for taxpayers, policy makers and public buyers.
The Commission underlined the need to unlock this wealth of EU public procurement data in the European strategy for data, published in February 2020.
The PPDS explained
The Public Procurement Data Space (PPDS) will connect European databases, including TED data on public procurement, and national procurement data sets available in national portals. The concrete implementation and expected benefits are further explained in the Commission communication published on 16 March.
The development of a truly integrated space for public procurement data will require a collaborative effort at EU, national and at the level of all public buyers across the EU. The PPDS will consist of 4 layers
- Data sources layer: a federated network of connected data sources such as the European databases and procurement data sets available in national portals
- Integration layer: the eProcurement ontology as common data format to create a harmonised data set
- Analytics layer: capacities for data discovery, querying and data analysis to generate new insights, to make data-driven decisions and to set KPIs on priority policy areas
- Client layer: a user-friendly interface for the different users
Harnessing the power of public procurement data
The PPDS will be at the core of the digital transformation of public procurement in the EU. Public procurement data will help to
- facilitate access for companies and SMEs to public procurement procedures across the EU
- increase transparency, integrity and accountability of public spending, fighting corruption and collusion
- get better value for money through data-driven benchmarking, planning and purchasing
- help recovery from the pandemic by monitoring the use of EU funds
- target public funds towards policy priorities, ensuring wider uptake of social and sustainable procurement
- ensure access for companies and SMEs to public procurement procedures across the EU and foster competition
- decrease red tape through easier reporting for EU countries
- generate key insights for policy-making
Timeline
The PPDS is being developed and implemented progressively. In a first step, the Commission will set up the basic architecture of the PPDS and a minimum data analytics toolset. As of Q3 2023, the Commission will support interested EU countries to connect their national publication portals to the PPDS through the integration layer. National portals using EU notices (either the current forms or eForms) will be easier to connect than those using other formats.
Implementation in EU countries
The use of the PPDS is not mandatory. EU countries can connect their national data bases on a voluntary basis to gain access to the data and analytics of the PPDS.
Coordination and support
The Commission is supporting the implementation of the PPDS in EU countries through discussions in the Multi-stakeholder Expert Group on eProcurement (EXEP working group), dedicated PPDS workshops with EU countries and one-on-one eProcurement workshops discussing the PPDS amongst others.
EU funding
The building and operation of the central services of the PPDS is financially supported by the Digital Europe Programme and access will be free of charge for its users. EU countries will bear their own costs for digitalising their public procurement systems and connecting their data sources to the PPDS. However, financial and technical support is available through the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), the Technical Support Instrument and the European structural investment funds.