OECD: Ireland’s ‘promising’ digitalisation of public procurement

The use of an e-procurement system and a framework which ensures use of data means that there are “promising foundations” to the digitalisation of Ireland’s public procurement system, according to a report by the OECD.

The report, entitled The Digital Transformation of Public Procurement in Ireland, states that digital transformation of public procurement is closely aligned with the Government’s ambitious digital agenda. Public sector digital and data strategies emphasise the direct delivery of public services, including reducing administrative overhead and increasing openness for business.

The success of establishing the mature use of e-procurement for the tendering phase of Ireland’s public procurement, has taken place primarily through the implementation of eTenders, which functions as a central point for publishing notifications and as the single eSender to Tenders Electronic Daily (TED), the online portal for public procurement notices from across the EU.

According to the report, “public procurement governance structures could better address and support digital transformation”, while also stating that the Government has no clearly articulated vision and roadmap to achieve digital transformation.

The absence of a clear national strategy for public procurement means that initiatives have mainly been driven by specific regulatory requirements such as those set out in the EU’s Public Procurement Directives. The report states: “The absence of a common set of guiding principles and oversight contributes to operational silos, limited interoperability among systems and reduced ability to make the most of joined-up data, ultimately resulting in a more complex environment for contracting authorities and suppliers, especially SMEs.”

The report further states that “Ireland would benefit from defining a clear vision and ambition for the digital transformation of public procurement”. It says that a whole-of-government plan would improve the State’s ability to make strategic decisions about the deployment of new tools and systems that could work together in a co-ordinated way.

Transformation journey in public procurement: from
e-procurement to digital
public procurement

The OECD Recommendation on Public Procurement, highlights the need to invest in technology and to improve the public procurement system by “harnessing the use of digital technologies throughout the public procurement cycle”.

The recommendation invites governments in the EU:

• to employ recent digital technological developments covering the public procurement cycle to ensure transparency and access to public tenders, increasing competition, simplifying processes for contract award and management, driving cost savings and integrating public procurement and public information; and

• to pursue state-of-the-art digital procurement tools that are modular, flexible, scalable and secure in order to assure business continuity, privacy and integrity that provide fair treatment and protect sensitive data, while supplying the core capabilities and functions that allow business innovation.

Furthermore, the OECD recommendation on digital government strategies guides governments in the design and implementation of whole-of government digital transformation reforms that enhance efficiency, inclusion and transparency in the public sector. Moreover, it encourages governing and using digital tools and data for human-centred and data-driven service design, delivery and policymaking across different policy areas.

Transformation of public procurement in Ireland

According to the OECD’s report, “ongoing efforts on digital government in Ireland offer possibilities for the digital transformation of public procurement to leverage policies and actions intended to increase the capacity of public sector institutions to adopt and use digital tools and data”.

The report hailed the State’s strategies such as Harnessing Digital – the Digital Ireland Framework, Connecting Government 2030: A Digital and ICT Strategy for Ireland’s Public Service, and Better Public Services, as setting out “a strong vision” for further digital transformation of government.

The State’s Connecting Government 2030, published in 2022, aims to change how people, businesses and policymakers interact, ensuring interoperability across levels of government and across public services. The strategy identifies six priority action areas with direct implications for the digital transformation of public procurement:

• A human-driven digital experience: including aspects related to service design and promotion of simplified access to government digital services and processes by citizens and businesses.
• Harnessing data effectively: including actions for improved data sharing and use in the Irish public sector such as the data strategy, data interoperability initiative, and the data governance board.
• Government as a platform: development of an ecosystem of building blocks such as digital standards, common components and resources that enable a systemic and coherent digital transformation across Ireland’s public sector. The development of common components and use of open-source solutions that enable scalable digital tools across the public sector are emphasised.
• Evolving through innovation: including the use of emerging technologies and out-of-the-box solutions for common and old problems.
• Strengthening digital skills: including an update of the competence model led by the public service with the needed digital skills to enable government digital transformation as well as the development of ICT professionalisation and talent development programmes.
• Focusing on governance and leadership: including broader governance structures within the public sector to enable the digital transformation of the government as well as consultations with businesses and individuals regarding priorities for digital government services.

Moreover, Ireland has been successful in establishing the mature use of e-procurement for the leading phase of the public procurement lifecycle, primarily the implementations of eTenders.

Ireland has continued to invest in eTenders, with a change of the IT platform going live in May 2023. The Office of Government Procurement (OGP) awarded a contract for the provision of eTenders platform to a new supplier for a period of up to 10 years in 2022.

However, there is limited evidence that current efforts for the digitalisation of public procurement are anchored in the Government’s vision and action on digital. In addition efforts to expand the use and functionality of eTenders are not enshrined within the Government strategy on digital government.

Furthermore, when transitioning to the new eTenders platform, the OGP ensured that historical data covering the previous 10 years would remain available by maintaining access to the previous eTenders platform on an interim basis until May 2024. This continued access to the legacy platform will allow contracting authorities to make the necessary provisions and act to retrieve and retain their procurement competition data off the platform beyond that date.

However, stakeholders in policymaking noted that this will result in the loss of a single point of access to the consolidated historical data, which will only be available through individual contracting authorities rather than on the eTenders platform. Given the large number of contracting authorities, this will represent a loss of transparency unless the consolidated historical data can be made publicly available in future.