The latest eProcurement news.
eTenderWales
Funding for eProcurement tools FY22/23, FY23/24 and FY 24/25
The funding for the current provisions and the delivery of the digital action plan for procurement was confirmed in the draft budget on 21 December 2021. Funding is subject to the final budget being approved in March 2022.
Delivery of digital action plan
Following the eProcurement landscape discovery exercise undertaken by Public, we have entered the delivery stage of the digital action plan. If you would like to be kept up to date on progress and attend our eProcurement user group sessions, please e-mail: ICTProcurement@gov.wales
New user interface for eTenderWales in March
In March, a major Jaggaer release 22.1 will be implemented on eTenderWales which will improve the user experience and interface. Jaggaer make major upgrades every 5 years. The release will not change the underlying functionality of eTenderWales. Further information available here.
Further improvements to the Single Procurement Document (SPD)
Last year, we improved the interaction between Sell2Wales and eTenderWales (eTW) by enabling information to be imported from eTW to Sell2Wales.
As part of the ongoing improvements of our eProcurement tools, we are reviewing the part 3 question bank for the Single Procurement Document in eTW. Part 3 questions are project/tender specific; assigned to individual tenders on a case by case basis. We are looking to categorise the questions into groups to simplify the search process. We will review questions quarterly to ensure they are up to date and inform customers of progress in the Commercial Procurement Newsletter.
If you would like to feed into this work, please e-mail: ICTProcurement@gov.wales
Follow on discovery exercises to support delivery of procurement digital action plan
We will shortly be undertaking several new small discoveries, where we will look at a procurement route planner, a pipeline planning tool and a policy mapping tool. If you would like to be involved in any of this work, please e-mail: ICTProcurement@gov.wales
New functionality on Sell2Wales to issue contract award notices
New functionality that allows buyers to request and obtain permission to make contract awards when the successful supplier is not registered on Sell2Wales has been implemented. This functionality overcomes a variety of scenarios including the need to issue a contract award notice after for example a direct award has been made. 6 buyer users have already made use of this functionality since it went live in November. To gain access to the new functionality, please contact the Sell2Wales helpdesk.
Removal of Sell2Wales postbox attachments older than 12 months
In September, new functionality meant buyers could easily download Sell2Wales postbox attachments and save them to buyer specific file storage solutions. Since its introduction, 17 buyers have used the functionality to download a total of 14,655 postbox attachments. Planned removal of all postbox attachments older than 12 months will begin in July 2022.
Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS)
OCDS was introduced as part of our procurement digital action plan, and improves the disclosure of data and documents throughout the contracting process by defining a common data model. OCDS was created to support organisations to increase transparency, and allow deeper analysis of contracting data by a wide range of users.
Sell2Wales is currently in the process of updating all Notice types utilised on the portal to align with OCDS schema. This includes the introduction of the OCDS primer field to connect the different stages of the procurement life cycle. We will shortly begin to improve access to complaint data on Sell2Wales which will include developing an Application Programming Interface (API) for improved integration with other e-tools and reporting platforms.