Simplification and transparency for public tenders in Sicily ensuring EU standards alignment
To simplify public procurement procedures in the Sicilian Region and align them with national and European standards. To make the use of public money more transparent. These are the objectives of the eProc4Sicily project, promoted by Sicilia Digitale SpA, in collaboration with Celeris Advisory Ltd, Maggioli SpA, the Municipality of Messina and the Parliament Watch Italia association, which will benefit public administrations, businesses and citizens alike.
Funded by the CEF Telecom eProcurement 2018 call by INEA (Innovation and Networks Executive Agency), the project started on November 1, 2019 and will end in October 2021.
eProc4Sicily is divided into a series of actions that aim, above all, to provide the tender portal of the Sicilian Region and the Municipality of Messina with new eProcurement functionalities and tools. Thus, the first feature introduced will be the ESPD (European Single Procurement Document) supporting the “Once-Only” principle that aims to ensure that citizens, institutions, and companies only have to provide certain standard information to the authorities and administrations once. This requires public administrations to share the information requested from citizens and businesses among themselves, in compliance with the rules of confidentiality and data protection. The ESPD service allows companies to share and re-use previously provided information to participate in a public tender at European and national level.
In line with the objectives of simplifying the procedures, the second novelty that eProc4Sicily introduces on the regional eProcurement portal is the connection with AVCPass, which allows to verify the requisites declared by the companies during the tender process. Through this tool, contracting authorities will be able to have access to the AVCPass platform database and obtain, compatibly with the privacy legislation, the information necessary for their checks without having to request it from economic operators themselves.
In terms of transparency in the use of public resources, eProc4Sicily aims to create a Contract Register for the Sicilian Region that will make information on a public tender available as Open Data and will be developed using the European eForms standard. The Register will make all the phases of a public contract transparent, from the tender, through the award of the tender to the execution of the works. For the implementation of the contracts register, the project aims to involve communities to receive indications on the data and information that is most necessary for an effective monitoring system of public expenditure.
The first webinar on the contract register will be organised by Parliament Watch Italia on 15 December 2020.
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