Evolution of the Procure project in Central Bohemia Region

The Central Bohemia region reports important progress in the deployment of the solution. Here's an account of the latest meetings and seminaries, and a quick highlight of the next steps for this pilot.

Seminars and meetings

So far the region organized two cycles of seminars for possible future users of the Procure platform. We invited representatives of contracting authorities from different towns and institutions in Central Bohemia and Prague as well as Regional and Local Business Chambers representing companies and entrepreneurs.

The first seminar was held on the 17^th of January 2008. On this occasion we welcomed in Prague the Burgundy region representatives (Florence Trinh, Directress of Public Procurement Department, and Cecile Boisseau, Public Procurement Officer), French society Sopra Group (Hyacinthe Charrier and Benjamin Lang), which is in charge of implementation of the platform in Central Bohemia Region, and about 35 public buyers coming from different Czech contracting authorities. We showed presentations of Procure project and of the current French e-bourgogne platform and raised a discussion on the issue. Following this seminar all participants received a brief questionnaire in order to get a feed-back on their understanding of the project and their interest to participate in it.

On the 18^th of January 2008 we organized a meeting of the Business Chamber of Paris (represented by Evelyne Houdard-Duval and Georges Fischer) with regional Business Chambers (represented by Ivana Chottová and Karel Špáda). Our invitation accepted also directors of all local Chambers of Central Bohemia region. The goal of the meeting was to define the activities of the Business Chambres in the framework of the Procure project.

On the 6^th of March 2008 we prepared a meeting with the Czech Ministry for Regional Development that is responsible for the National Plan for the Introduction of Electronic Public Procurement over the Period 2006 – 2010 in the presence of Sopra Group. The Ministry was represented by the Director of Public Procurement Department and several other persons from his team. We introduced the link between the goals of the Ministry and the Procure project. One of the issues discussed was electronic extracts of qualified suppliers provided by the Ministry

On the 7^th of March 2008 we organised the second meeting with Central Bohemia public buyers in the presence of the Directress of Public Procurement Departement of the Burgundy region and representants of the French society Sopra Group. Our invitation accepted about 12 Czech public buyers (the same attendants as on the first seminar) and representants of the Chambre of commerce.

During this meeting we summarized the evolution of the project up to now and we presented the future steps to be done. We also showed to public buyers how to use the platform in order to create a minor contract using the current French platform.

Adaptations and deployment of the platform

Sopra Group elaborated a document called Functional specifications of adaptations that describes the specific Czech legislation and procedures of Czech public buyers. According to this document the current solution will be adapted to the Czech conditions

In April work on translation of the service will be done. The final platform is supposed to be deployed in May. The Central Bohemia Region will be in charge of trainings and technical assistance for public buyers, the Chamber of commerce will ensure trainings for enterprises.