CEN/TC 440/WG 4 - e-Tendering

This document provides an overview of eTendering standards in the set Business Interoperability Interfaces (BII) for public procurement. BII eTendering covers the tendering part of the e-procurement chain, starting from subscribing interest in a business opportunity till concluding the contract.
BII focus on exchange of information between business partners. This brings in scope all electronic communication between a contracting authority and an economic operator. Back-office information processing, like the evaluation of tenders, is out of scope.
To ensure interoperability each electronic communication will be described as follows:
- A procurement procedure guideline identifies the position of the transactions  in a procedure;
- A choreography describes the sequence of transactions;
- A transaction describes all  information elements exchanged between business partners;
- A syntax implementation guideline (SIG) provides the syntax bindings needed to implement the transaction.

This choreographies document specifies pre-award processes between Contracting Bodies (Buyer) and Economic Operators (Seller) where the Contracting Body wants to contract an Economic Operator. It specifies a series of activities that govern communication between the parties and refers to the specifications where information and rules that apply are specified.
The various possible behaviours of the Seller and Buyer subsequent to the communication are conveyed by variants of this choreography that are specified in Clause 6.
This document is linked to the directives on public procurement [7] and on procurement by entities operating in the water, energy, transport and postal services sectors [8] and on the award of concession contracts [9] and on the coordination of procedures for the award of contracts in the fields of defence and security [10]. Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/1780 establishing standard forms for the publication of notices [eForms] [11] and Implementing Regulation (EU) 2016/7 establishing the standard form for the European Single Procurement Document [ESPD] [12] are supplementary regulations that are relevant to this document.
The corresponding transactions are described in prEN 17014-2:2026 [13].
NOTE 1   In these editions of the EN 17014 series [2], procurement documents and tender information are mainly unstructured. Future versions will also support structured payloads, where the data content of the documents is semantically and syntactically defined.
NOTE 2   Relevant legislation is currently under development. Forthcoming legislative initiatives could have implications for the types of procurement procedures addressed by this document.
This document promotes data minimization in line with GDPR [14], avoiding unnecessary collection of personal contact data at the mere document-access stage.
How to claim compliance to this choreography is specified in 6.2.2.

The document describes the transactions for pre-award processes between Contracting Entities (Buyer) and Economic Operators (Seller), where the Buyer seeks to establish a contract for the procurement of products, services, or works. The various possible behaviours of Buyers and Sellers are represented through choreography variants as described in FprEN 17014-1:2026 [7].
This document specifies the transactions described by the choreography variants and captures their specific functional and informational aspects. The transactions are grouped along the following collaborations which are applied in pre-award choreographies:
—   Procurement procedure subscription
—   Procurement documents access
—   Tender submission
—   Procurement documents questions and answers
—   Tender clarification
—   Tender withdrawal
—   Notify awarding
—   Tendering message response
—   Tenderer qualification
—   Qualification response
—   Invitation to tender
For each transaction, the document specifies the underlying business and information requirements, including the functional and procedural objectives the transaction must fulfil, the structure and semantics of the related data, and the governing business rules ensuring valid execution. In addition, all defined data elements are aligned with the eProcurement Ontology (ePO) to achieve semantic interoperability and consistent representation across procurement systems.
This document specifies transactions used in electronic public procurement during the pre-award phase.
This document defines the information exchanges, business terms, business groups, business rules and transaction requirements needed to support interoperable pre-award procurement processes. The business terms, business groups and business rules defined in this document are aligned with the eProcurement Ontology, where applicable. This document is applicable to electronic procurement systems and services that implement pre-award transactions between economic operators, contracting authorities and other actors involved in the procurement process. This document does not define procurement procedure law, national administrative requirements, user-interface requirements, corporate mandate verification procedures, or specific implementation technologies. This document is intended to be used together with EN 17014-1, which defines the related choreography model for electronic public procurement.
This document is linked to Directive 2014/24/EC [8] on public procurement, Directive 2014/25/EU [9] on procurement by entities operating in the water, energy, transport and postal services sectors, Directive 2014/23/EU [10] on the award of concession contracts and Directive 2009/81/EC [11] on the coordination of procedures for the award of contracts in the fields of defence and security.
The identifier of this choreographies document is FprEN 17014-1:2026 [7].