Project information
EVALUATION OF THE DESIGN AND FUNCTIONING OF THE CZECH NATIONAL ELECTRONIC TOOL (NEN) WITHIN THE CZECH E-PROCUREMENT ENVIRONMENT

In 2015, the Czech Republic has launched the national e-procurement platform NEN. According to the e-procurement strategy adopted in 2016, NEN shall become mandatory the mandatory e-procurement tool for all contracting authorities, unless they obtain an authorisation to use an Individual Procurement Tool (IEN). NEN makes part of the general e-procurement environment referred to as NIPEZ, which ensures the links to other modules, such as notice publication module or statistical module.
The development of NEN took several years and has been delayed several times. In the meantime, a private market of e-procurement tools has been developed and many contracting authorities are already using private e-procurement tools, offering also additional functions such as links to accounting systems or invoicing modules.
Private operators regularly express concerns about the lack of visibility and absence of certain rules concerning the authorisation process of Individual Electronic Tools. The European Commission was informed that several claims against the procurement process of NEN have been filed. Various reports, including Supreme Audit Office, have expressed serious doubts about the functionalities and cost efficiency of the NEN performance.
In this context, the European Commission would like to obtain an independent and updated assessment of the situation concerning the functioning of NEN and its relations with the remaining e-procurement environment, in particular technical links to publication and statistical tools and the modalities of granting authorisations for Individual Electronic Tools.
The aim of this contract is therefore to provide an assessment of the Czech National Electronic Tool (NEN) in terms of its current design, its processes and performance parameters.
The assessment should provide also an overview of the remaining major components of the Czech e-Procurement environment, such as
a) notification, statistical and complementary tools directly linked to NEN and
b) main alternative/competing e-procurement tools available on the Czech market (in particular private e-procurement tools), including the procedure for obtaining the Individual Electronic Tool authorisation.