The European Space Agency (ESA) initiates every year more than 1000 development contracts for various space systems – from launchers or navigation satellites systems up to space technology studies. This is done mostly through all Europe and more than 3 billion euros are contracted every year.

This requires an interoperable tendering system where the PEPPOL technology – when it will be accessible in all ESA member states – would be essential.

Now ESA is launching an open competition for the selection of the e-tendering and supplier’s registration tool based on market available packages. This is an invitation to the tender which can be found on the Agency’s EMITS portal following http://emits.esa.int – a registration questionnaire to be filled for ITT document download authorization is required.

“A potential cooperation between the European Space Agency and PEPPOL would be a big step forward in showing that electronic procurement via PEPPOL enabled solutions is highly attractive. So we are working very intensively to establish a PEPPOL-pilot with ESA”, states Enrique Vich, PEPPOL’s PR and Recruitment Director.

PEPPOL (Pan-European Public Procurement Online) is a Large Scale Pilot project under the European Commission Competitiveness and Innovation Programme (CIP) ICT Policy Support Programme (ICT-PSP).

Many EU countries use electronic procurement (e-Procurement) to make bidding for and satisfying public sector contracts simpler and more efficient. However, these solutions are often implemented as isolated islands within Member States, with limited communication towards other e-Procurement communities and cross Member State-borders. PEPPOL will enable the connection of existing e-Procurement communities, which is essential to allow businesses to bid for public sector contracts and handle orders and invoices seamless anywhere in the EU: an important step towards achieving the Single European Market.

• Enrique Vich, PR and Recruitment Director, enrique.vich@peppol.eu (based in the Austrian Ministry of Finance)
  
• Benjamin Schreiber, Project Manager e-Tendering at ESA, benjamin.schreiber@esa.int, +33 1 53697798.