ICT STANDARDISATION AND PUBLIC PROCUREMENT IN THE UNITED STATES AND IN THE EUROPEAN UNION: INFLUENCE ON

EGOVERNMENT DEPLOYMENT

Luis Guijarro-Coloma. TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF VALENCIA –

UNIVERSIDAD POLITÉCNICA DE VALENCIA CAMINO DE VERA, S/N. 46022

VALENCIA. SPAIN

TEL.: +34 963879303 FAX: +34 963877309

E-MAIL: LGUIJAR@DCOM.UPV.ES

Author's version of the manuscript published by Elsevier in Telecommunications

Policy.

doi: 10.1016/j.telpol.2009.02.001

Most governments have regarded interoperability as one of the key enablers of egovernment. If interoperability was achieved, the vision of an integrated provision of public services to both citizens and businesses by means of the information and communications technologies (ICT) regardless of the number and type of departments involved in the provision could be realized. This paper analyses two factors that may influence egovernment interoperability: standardisation and public procurement. The paper analyses the policy and legal framework setup by these factors and checks whether egovernment deployment have been influenced by them or not. The analysis is focused on the cases of the United States federal government and of the European Union institutions and Member States administrations.

Keywords: standardisation, public procurement, egovernment, interoperability,

European Union, United States

mailto:lguijar@dcom.upv.esmailto:lguijar@dcom.upv.esmailto:lguijar@dcom.upv.esmailto:lguijar@dcom.upv.esmailto:lguijar@dcom.upv.esmailto:lguijar@dcom.upv.esmailto:lguijar@dcom.upv.esmailto:lguijar@dcom.upv.eshttp://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2009.02.001

ICT STANDARDISATION AND PUBLIC PROCUREMENT IN THE UNITED STATES AND IN THE EUROPEAN UNION: INFLUENCE ON

EGOVERNMENT DEPLOYMENT

uring late 90s, most governments in OECD countries released their egovernment strategies. In the

strategies, a common vision was presented where an integrated provision of public services to

both citizens and businesses by means of the information and communications technologies (ICT) may be

realised, regardless of the number and type of departments involved in the provision. In order to fulfil this

vision, egovernment strategies have been supported by several policies, namely security, confidentiality,

delivery channels, etc. One of such policies is the interoperability policy (CEC, 2002; OECD, 2003).

Interoperability can be defined as “the ability to exchange information and mutually to use the

information which has been exchanged”, according to the European Commission (CEC, 1991). But more

technical definitions are found in the literature, such as the following one: “Interoperability is the ability

to exchange functionality and interpretable data between two software entities. It can be defined in terms

of four enabling requirements: communications, request generation, data format, and semantics”

(Mowbray, 1995), where the definition goes into detail enumerating the sort of requirements that

interoperability must tackle.

D

Many interoperability policies have been implemented by means of interoperability frameworks.

An interoperability framework is a tool designed for facilitating interoperability. The recipients of the

interoperability frameworks are those agencies that are engaged in egovernment initiatives. And the final

aim of an interoperability framework is to make easy the integrated provision of services to both citizens

and businesses by means of egovernment. Interoperability frameworks have been produced by a large

amount of egovernment agencies around the world. At least, an interoperability framework contains a

technical standard catalogue. A technical standard catalogue lists those standards that are recommended

for the deployment of egovernment systems within the public administration. The standards that can be

incorporated in some catalogues are required to be developed by standardisation bodies, but other

catalogues do include any standard which has wide market acceptance. Guijarro (2005) discusses

thoroughly this issue. In addition to the technical standard catalogue, some interoperability frameworks

also state policies, guidelines and best practices.

2

This paper investigates how egovernment interoperability policy implementation relates to the

context of broader government policies. The paper focuses on two policies: standardisation policy and

public procurement policy. The rationale of the analysis undertaken through the paper is the following.

Firstly, interoperability frameworks are used to select those standards that are to enable interoperability

between egovernment systems belonging to different departments in one or more public administrations. .

Each country defines the requirements on the standards through their standardisation policy. Therefore,

the standardisation policy is expected to influence which standards select and recommended in an

interoperability framework. And secondly, interoperability frameworks usually guide public procurement

in the area of egovernment systems and service deployment. Specifically, the standards that are

recommended or mandated by an interoperability framework are usually referred to in contract documents

when governments procure themselves with ICT systems. Since public procurement regulations regulate

how technical specifications are set out in contract documentation, it is expected that the support of

interoperability frameworks to the procurement procedures would be aligned to the regulations.

Based on the above rationale, the paper analyses the cases of three public administrations that

have been very active in egovernment deployment. The three cases are the federal government of the

United States (US), the European Union (EU) institutions and the UK government. For each case, both

the standardisation policy and system, and the public procurement policy and practice are described.

From this description, some factors that may influence the interoperability frameworks are identified.

Finally, the identified factors are compared against the current practices in the use of the interoperability

frameworks.

The paper is structured as follows. In the second section, the research methodology is described.

In the third section, the standardisation and public procurement policies that both the US and the EU have

developed are described and compared1 and the influence that these policies may have on egovernment

deployment is explained. In the fourth section, the use of interoperability frameworks by the US federal

government, the EU institutions and the UK government is described. In the fifth section, the expected

influence of the standardisation and public procurement policies is checked against the actual practices in

egovernment deployment in both scenarios, the US and the EU. Finally, conclusions are drawn.

1 As far as the standardisation and the public procurement are concerned, the UK is constrained by the EU legal

framework.

3

The paper is focused on the influence on egovernment deployment. Nevertheless, the

conclusions can be applied to the specific context of telecommunications systems and services

deployment. This statement is based on two reasons. Firstly, interoperability frameworks encompass

issues, among others, at the network and interconnection level, where telecommunications lie. And

secondly, public administration telecommunications are currently managed by many governments as an

asset within the egovernment strategy.

Methodology

The research that has been conducted is qualitative-oriented. The process of the research has

progressed in the interpretation of the reality by means of an iterative collection and analysis of data and

of building of the research hypothesis (Hernandez Sampieri, 2006).

The data collection method used in the research is of the non-standardised type, and it has

basically consisted of analysis of contents of written documents. The documents are mainly the official

documents that each organisation under analysis has published through their official web sites. This fact

could pose problems for the research validity, because of the biased source of data. However, the author

would argue that, although relying on a unique channel of information dissemination is not the best

scenario, the documents are produced by the different actors involved in the area under research. Indeed,

documents on egovernment that are relevant for our research have been produced by the following three

different actors:

• Legislative bodies, e.g. the House of Representatives in the US and the European

Parliament in the EU

• Executive bodies, e.g. the Office of Management and Budget in the US and the

European Commission in the EU

• Technical departments, e.g. the FEA Project Management Office in the US and the

IDABC Unit in the EU.

The above actors reflect different perspectives over the problem under study, which is

egovernment interoperability, and their documents reflect the consensus among the different stakeholders

that share the respective perspective; for instance, IT industry interests are taken into account by the

documents elaborated by the technical departments, which usually conduct public consultations on the

issue.

4

Standardisation and public procurement

The Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement

The Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement (TBT) was negotiated during the Uruguay Round

and it became an integral part of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Agreement of 1994 (WTO, 1994).

The TBT tries to ensure that regulations, standards, testing and certification procedures do not

create unnecessary obstacles to world trade. The TBT have, therefore, an important impact on both the

standardisation and the procurement regulations on WTO members, as the following paragraphs show.

Firstly, the TBT encourages members to use existing international standards for their national

regulations, or for parts of them, unless “their use would be ineffective or inappropriate” to fulfil a given

policy objective (Article 2.4).

Secondly, on the conviction that widespread participation in international standardising bodies

can ensure that international standards reflect country-specific production and trade interests, the TBT

Agreement encourages members to participate, within the limits of their resources, in the work of

international bodies for the preparation of standards (Article 2.6) and guides or recommendations for

conformity assessment procedures (Article 5.5).

And thirdly, the agreement sets out a Code of Good Practice for the Preparation, Adoption and

Application of Standards. The Code lays down disciplines in respect of central government, local

government, non-governmental and regional standardising bodies developing voluntary standards. It is

open for acceptance by any of these standardising bodies. Since 1 January 1995 until 31 January 2008,

167 standardising bodies have endorsed the Code. The Code states provisions that ensure that standards

do not create unnecessary obstacles to international trade. With a view to harmonising standards, the

Code encourages to the standardising bodies within the territory of a member to make every effort to

avoid duplication and overlap with the work of other bodies in the national territory or with the work of

relevant international or regional standardising bodies. The Code also states that the standardising bodies

should elaborate their work programmes, at least once every six months, and published them through the

ISO/IEC Information Centre.

Both the US and the EU showed up as key stakeholders during the TBT Agreement preparation.

Furthermore, they have also been influenced by the TBT implementation, as the following sections will

illustrate, within the scope of their standardisation and public procurement regulations.

5

The United States

The current standardisation policy of the US is based on the American National Standards Institute’s

(ANSI) document “United States Standards Strategy”.

The US Standards Strategy (USSS) was published in December 2005. The principles stated by

USSS are not new, since the USSS is a revision of the National Standards Strategy for the US (NSS) that

had been approved in August 2000. As a basic tenet, the first NSS reaffirmed that the US is committed to

a sector-based approach to voluntary standardization activities, both domestically and globally.

From the NSSS’ introduction: “Voluntary consensus standards for products, processes and

services are at the foundation of the US economy and society. The US has a proud tradition of developing

and using voluntary standards to support the needs of our citizens and the competitiveness of US industry.

The ANSI, the coordinator of the US standards system, has brought together public and private sector

interests to make this happen.” (ANSI, 2000)

Following this principle, ANSI’s role is not to develop standards but to facilitate the

development of American National Standards (ANS) by accrediting the procedures of standards

developing organisations (SDOs). These organisations work cooperatively to develop voluntary national

consensus standards. Accreditation by ANSI signifies that the procedures used by the standards body in

connection with the development of ANSs meet the Institute’s essential requirements for openness,

balance, consensus and due process. These four essential requirements are the basic characteristics of a

“voluntary consensus standard”, and they were adopted by the WTO in the TBT Agreement as bedrock

principles for developing standards (Marks, 2001).

It is estimated that in the US today there are hundreds of “traditional” SDOs – with the 20 largest

SDOs producing 90% of the standards – and hundreds more “non-traditional” standards development

bodies, such as consortia. At year-end 2003, about 200 of these standards developers were accredited by

ANSI; and there were more than 10,000 ANSs.

The US standardisation process is then strongly reliant on the private sector performance.

Nevertheless, the situation in the 90’s was radically different. According to data provided by the National

Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 1996, there were more than 93,000 standards produced

and nearly 700 organizations that cited standards development as an area of activity. Of these, the federal

government was the largest single creator and user of standards (more than 44,000 of them); the private

sector in the US collectively had about 49,000 standards.

6

The leading role that the US federal government played in the standardisation arena at the time

was not coherent with the desired scenario, as it would be formulated at the NSS, where strong leadership

was envisioned for the private sector. The change force came from the approval of the National

Technology Transfer and Advancement Act (NTTAA) of 1995 (USC, 1996). A major goal of the

NTTAA was to reduce the need for federal government use of government-unique standards. To achieve

the goal federal agencies were encouraged:

• to utilize voluntary consensus standards where feasible: “all Federal agencies and

departments shall use technical standards that are developed or adopted by voluntary

consensus standards bodies, using such technical standards as a means to carry out

policy objectives or activities determined by the agencies and departments.”

• and to participate as appropriate in voluntary consensus standards development

activities: “Federal agencies and departments shall consult with voluntary, private

sector, consensus standards bodies and shall, when such participation is in the public

interest and is compatible with agency and departmental missions, authorities,

priorities, and budget resources, participate with such bodies in the development of

technical standards.”

Following the NTTAA adoption, the NIST was required to report on a yearly basis the progress

in the implementation of the above provisions by the federal agencies. In the report, the number of

voluntary consensus standards used by each agency in its regulatory activities is reported; and the number

of agency representatives participating in SDOs is also reported. Finally, federal agencies should also

report the use of government-unique standards in lieu of private sector standards, and explain the reasons

why they must use them.

Standards that are approved as ANSs satisfy all NTTAA requirements. However, as it will be

shown below, the NTTAA does not preclude the use of a standard that does not comply with the

requirements of an ANS when the standard is produced by the private sector.

The NTTAA has had major implications for the relationship between the government and

standardisation. The implications belong not only to the government regulations, and to the government

participation in standards development, but also to the government procurement, as we will show in the

following paragraphs.

7

In order to guide federal agencies on the policy stated by the NTTAA of 1995, the Office of

Management and Budget of the Executive Office of the President of the US (OMB) issued a revision of

Circular A-119 in 1998.

As far as public procurement activities were concerned, OMB mandated that “all federal

agencies must use voluntary consensus standards in lieu of government-unique standards in their

procurement […] activities, except where inconsistent with law or otherwise impractical. In these

circumstances, your agency must submit a report describing the reason(s) for its use of government-

unique standards in lieu of voluntary consensus standards to the OMB through the NIST”

The following goals were cited for the Circular:

“a. Eliminate the cost to the Government of developing its own standards and decrease the cost

of goods procured and the burden of complying with agency regulation.

b. Provide incentives and opportunities to establish standards that serve national needs.

c. Encourage long-term growth for U.S. enterprises and promote efficiency and economic

competition through harmonization of standards.

d. Further the policy of reliance upon the private sector to supply Government needs for goods

and services.” (OMB, 1998)

The Circular made then clear that the US policy with relation to the standards use for regulatory,

and for procurement purposes, was to pass the flow to the private sector. This commitment was so strong

that private sector standards were recognised as the preferred choice, whether the SDOs were accredited

by ANSI or not. In fact, the Circular did not encourage the use of voluntary consensus standards per se:

“This policy does not establish a preference among standards developed in the private sector.

Specifically, […] agencies that procure products or services based on non-consensus standards are not

required to report on such procurements. For example, this policy allows agencies to choose among

commercial-off-the-shelf products, regardless of whether the underlying standards are developed by

voluntary consensus standards bodies or not” (OMB, 1998).

The European Union

Within the EU, like the US, government intervention in standard setting is widely accepted as appropriate

to protect intellectual property owners’ rights, and to police the fairness of private, voluntary standard-

developing processes. Unlike the US, however, EU Member States may also work directly with

recognised national standards bodies (NSBs) in order to implement industrial policies. Although the

8

NSBs of Member States may work closely with the private stakeholders in those countries in developing

voluntary standards in much the same way that ANSI does, they also have more coercive powers than

does ANSI as a result of their authority to eliminate conflicts among national standards. The above

authority stems from the fact that the free movements of goods and services, as part of the EU internal

market, is ensured under the Treaty of the European Community, and therefore any Member State should

be informed of the technical regulations –e.g. national standards– contemplated by any other Member

State. These requirements are regulated by Directive 98/34/EC. In the directive the NSBs and the

European Standards Organisations (ESO), which are relevant to the provisions laid down in the directive,

are also enumerated (EPC, 1998). The ESOs are the following:

• CEN (European Committee for Standardisation) deals with all sectors except the

electrotechnology and telecommunication sectors.

• Cenelec (European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardisation) deals with

standards in the eletrotechnical field.

• ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) covers the

telecommunications field and some aspects of broadcasting.

At EU level, there exist European standards. For a standard to be European, it has to be adopted

by one of the ESOs and be publicly available. Where a conflict shows up or is likely to show up between

a national standard and a European standard, the latter will prevail.

Within the above scenario, the EU set out the main elements of a standardisation policy in the

international context in 1996 and provided further guidance in 2001 (CEC, 1996, 2001). Following that

policy, all NSBs and ESOs have endorsed the TBT Code. However, NSBs may represent national

positions independently in the international context; the EU only encourages that national positions are

coherent with European policies and legislation, if existing.

Within the regulatory activity, standards play a useful role in helping to create the single market

by supporting a series of legislation called directives, which have a EU scope. In order to increase the

efficiency of this role, the EU developed in the mid 80’s a form of co-regulation to coordinate law reform

efforts with standard-developing efforts. This co-regulation was new and is known as the “New

Approach” to standardization. Before the New Approach was originally adopted in 1985, harmonisation

of technical standards in Europe was achieved by incorporating specific technical standards in legislation

and making them mandatory. New approach directives are special in that they do not contain technical

9

detail; instead, they contain broad safety requirements. Manufacturers therefore need to translate these

broad “essential” requirements into technical solutions. There is no prevalence of any public or private

procedure for demonstrating the translation. Nevertheless, one of the ways that manufacturers can do this

is to use specially developed European standards. These standards are called harmonised standards and

they are said to give a “presumption of conformity” with the directive for which they have been written.

Thus, the role of the private sector in the standard development is recognised both at national

and EU level, but national and European “traditional” SDOs have been created and have shown up as

main players.

Public procurement accounted for over 16% of the EU's GDP in 2002. Based on this fact, the EU

action has sought to create a European area for public procurement in the context of the internal market.

The “directive 2004/18/EC on the coordination of procedures for the award of public works contracts,

public supply contracts and public service contracts” was to harmonise the public procurement procedures

in all Member States.

The issue that is relevant to the egovernment deployment is the issue of the technical

specifications. From the point of view of public procurement, technical specifications define the

characteristics required of a material, supply or service such that they fulfil the use for which they are

intended. Directive 2004/18/EC (EPC, 2004) states that technical specifications should be set out in the

contract documentation, such as contract notices, contract documents or additional documents (Article

23.1) without creating unjustified obstacles to competition (Article 23.2). The characteristics may include

environmental performance, design, conformity assessment, performance, safety, dimensions, quality

assurance, and production methods2.When drawing up its technical specifications, a contracting entity

may refer to the following: “national standards transposing European standards, […] common technical

specifications, or international standards, other technical reference systems established by the European

standardisation bodies or — when these do not exist — to national standards, […] or national technical

specifications relating to the design, calculation and execution of the works and use of the products”

(Article 23.3). However, the tenderer's tender is valid if he/she manages to prove that it meets the

requirements defined by the technical specifications in an equivalent fashion. An appropriate means may

2 From the point of view of egovernment interoperability, the performance characteristic is mostly relevant

10

be constituted by the submission of a technical dossier or a test report from a recognised body (laboratory,

certification and inspection body) (Article 23.5).

In order to make clear the outreach of the above paragraph, the following definitions are taken

from the Annex VI of Directive 2004/18/EC:

“1. (b) ‘technical specification’ […] means a specification in a document defining the required

characteristics of a product or a service, such as quality levels, environmental performance levels, design

for all requirements (including accessibility for disabled persons) and conformity assessment,

performance, use of the product, safety or dimensions, including requirements relevant to the product as

regards the name under which the product is sold, terminology, symbols, testing and test methods,

packaging, marking and labelling, user instructions, production processes and methods and conformity

assessment procedures;

2. ‘standard’ means a technical specification approved by a recognised standardising body for

repeated or continuous application, compliance with which is not compulsory and which falls into one of

the following categories:

— International standard: a standard adapted by an international standards organisation and

made available to the general public,

— European standard: a standard adopted by a European standards organisation and made

available to the general public,

— National standard: a standard adopted by a national standards organisation and made

available to the general public;

4. ‘Common technical specification’ (CTS) means a technical specification laid down in

accordance with a procedure recognised by the Member States which has been published in the Official

Journal of the European Union;”

Finally, the Directive states clearly that technical specifications should not mention a specific

make or process nor do they refer to trade marks, patents or a specific production (Article 23.8).

The Directive has been transposed to the Member State’s national legislations, e.g. The Public

Contracts Regulations 2006 by the UK Government (UKT, 2006). The issue of the technical

specifications is covered in an almost identical manner.

Thus, standards are recognised as a way to fulfil technical requirements in EU public

procurements, but other sort of technical specifications may be referred to in the contracts, such as a CTS.

11

The requirements on the latter, however, are not as stringent as on the standards; for example, standards

should be unique for a given functionality, whereas a CTS does not. And, in the end, the tender has

always the option of demonstrating the technical compliance through a recognised body.

Influence on egovernment deployment

Based on the above description, the following conclusions can be drawn with regards the expected

influence that both standardisation policy and public procurement regulations are to have on egovernment

deployment. The conclusions are focused on two issues. Firstly, how standardization policies determine

which sort of standards can be selected when developing and deploying egovernment systems and

services. And secondly, how public procurement regulations determine which sort of standards

egovernment systems and services tender documentation may refer to.

In the US, the NTTAA encouraged that government should preferably choose voluntary-

consensus standards, and only under special circumstances government-unique standards are allowed.

When the OMB translated the NTTAA into concrete guidelines for government procurement, federal

agencies were required to avoid government-unique standards in their procurement activities, and

voluntary-consensus standards were identified as the alternative and mandatory choice. As we note above,

however, even non-consensus standards were allowed, which open the door to commercial-off-the-shell

products. Therefore, the US standardisation and public procurement policies call for an industry-led

egovernment deployment and therefore the US federal government is not expected to cast an influence on

the choice of technologies in egovernment systems and services deployment.

In the EU, as far as the selection of standards for egovernment deployment is concerned and

according the standardisation regulations, neither public nor private standards are excluded, but

preference for standards developed by the ESOs is implicit. This preference is also implicit in public

procurement regulations, which are harmonised in all EU Member States by Directive 2004/18/EC. The

EU legal framework seem therefore to be designed to facilitate a Europe-wide harmonised egovernment

deployment, with an important role played by the European standards –which are those developed by

ESOs.

Egovernment deployment

In this section, the egovernment interoperability policies of the US federal government, the EU

institutions and the UK government are described. The aim of this section is to show the actual

12

implementation of egovernment policies with regards interoperability. In the next section, the

implemented policies will be checked against the expected influence from the framework described

above.

The United States federal government

In the US, Congress passed the eGovernment Act of 2002 (HR, 2002), which was to expand the

use of the Internet and computer resources in order to deliver government services for a citizen-centred,

results-oriented, and market-based government. However, the egovernment implementation has been

highly influenced by the earlier Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996. In both cases, the OMB has provided the

additional guidance needed for egovernment implementation. The most popular initiatives of the US

federal government in the area of egovernment are the Presidential Initiatives. In 2001, the OMB and

federal agencies identified twenty-four initiatives that would be operated and supported by agencies and

that would provide high-quality and well-managed solutions for areas such as tax filing, federal

rulemaking and e-training.

As far as interoperability is concerned, the OMB has executed its guidance through the Federal

Enterprise Architecture Project Management Office (FEAPMO), and in cooperation with the Federal

Chief Information Officer (CIO) Council. The OMB’s approach to interoperability has been based on the

enterprise architecture concept3. OMB currently requires alignment of all Departments and cross-agency

architectures with a Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA). The FEA consists of four basic reference

models, namely, Business, Service Component, Technical and Data Reference Models, plus a

Performance Reference Model. By means of the FEA models, the OMB aims to identify common

business processes, common components, common technologies and common data assets across different

3 Enterprise architecture refers to a comprehensive description of all the key elements and relationships that make up

an enterprise. In this definition, an enterprise may be a company, an institution or a department within a company or

an institution. And the elements to be described may be data, network equipments, software components, business

locations, human resources, etc. Enterprise architecting aims at aligning the business processes and goals of an

enterprise and the applications and systems that build up its technical infrastructure. There are many different

approaches to describing the elements of an enterprise architecture (Schekkerman, 2004). One approach that has

grown in popularity in the last decade is based on a framework developed by John Zachman (1987).

13

governmental departments and to eliminate redundancy. Interoperability may be achieved through this

identification process.

In 2002, the Federal CIO Council and the FEAPMO published a document to augment

FEAPMO guidance to the Presidential Initiatives, under the title “E-Gov Enterprise Architecture

Guidance (Common Reference Model)” (CIOC, 2002). As regards the guidance on the use of standards, it

stated the following: “This is the real world facing E-Gov Initiatives – a world built on a wide range of

proprietary, quasi-open and fully open specifications. Thus, instead of “open standards”, this Guidance

focuses on “voluntary industry standards” (the term used in the NTTAA) to meet the portability and

interoperability goals of E-Gov Initiatives.” This statement delivered the first message that only ANS-like

standards would be taken into consideration for the setup of egovernment infrastructure under the

Presidential Initiatives.

However, in 2003, after a huge effort invested in the preparation of the FEA, the FEAPMO

published the Technical Reference Model. “The FEA Technical Reference Model (TRM) provides a

foundation to describe the standards, specifications, and technologies4 supporting the secure delivery,

exchange, and construction of business (or Service) components and e-Gov solutions. The FEA TRM

unifies existing Agency TRMs and electronic Government (e-Gov) guidance by providing a foundation to

advance the re-use of technology and component services from a Government-wide perspective”

(FEAPMO, 2003). According to this statement, since 2003 the FEA TRM should be regarded as the

definitive guidance for egovernment deployment, substituting for the previous Guidance of 2002.

4 As regards the concepts of standards, specifications and technologies, the FEA TRM adopts the following

definitions:

• “Technologies – refers to a specific implementation of a standard within the context of a given

specification. The following describes for illustrative purpose the use of the term ‘technologies’ as

used in the TRM. […] ODBC is an implementation of a data access standard within various Microsoft

specifications. While [it is] based on an Open Standard, each vendor has their own implementation of

the standard based on their specific technologies.

• Standard – hardware, software, or specifications that are widely used and accepted (de facto), or are

sanctioned by a standards organization (de jure).

• Specification – a formal layout/blueprint/design of an application development model for developing

distributed component-based architectures.”

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Furthermore, it changed the federal position with reference to the requirements for the use of technologies

in the Presidential Initiatives. Federal agencies would not be required to base their procurements for

egovernment related activities on standards from ANSI-accredited SDOs. On the contrary, any sort of

standard, de jure or de facto, or even a proprietary technology can be used for the deployment of

egovernment solutions. This situation may eventually have a negative impact in terms of interoperability.

Despite the fact that the OMB’s Circular and FEA TRM seemed to open the door to using trade

marks in procurement activities for egovernment systems, the OMB published a memorandum in 2005

with the aim to maintain vendor and technology neutral contract specifications. Specifically, the

memorandum showed concern on the fact that “the use of brand name specifications in agency

solicitations may have increased significantly in recent years, particularly for information technology

procurements” (OMB, 2005). In order to counteract this fact, the OMB asked to comply with the

requirements in the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) regarding the use of brand name

specifications. FAR 11.105 states that “agency requirements shall not be written so as to require a

particular brand name, product, or feature of a product, peculiar to one manufacturer, thereby precluding

consideration of a product manufactured by another company …”. An exception to this rule is allowed

only if there is a written justification and a “particular brand name, product or feature is essential to the

Government’s requirements, and market research indicates other companies’ similar products, or products

lacking the particular feature, do not meet, or cannot be modified to meet, the agency’s needs.”

The European Union institutions

In the EU, the European Commission has setup different initiatives in the area of egovernment

within the limits of the few powers of the EU in the domain of Public Administration (Alabau, 2004).

One initiative is the IDABC5 Programme, which can be regarded as the initiative that best serves the

different Member States administrations as far as egovernment is concerned.

As regards the interoperability policy, the IDABC Programme issued its Architecture Guidelines

(version 4.1) in March 1999, as a supporting tool for the Decision of the European Parliament and the

Council 1720/1999/EC “Interoperability and access to Trans-European Networks for the electronic

5 IDABC stands for Interoperable Delivery of European eGovernment Services to public Administrations, Businesses

and Citizens.

15

Interchange of Data between Administrations” (EPC, 1999). Current version is 7.1 and it was issued in

September 2004 (IDABC, 2004a). The Architecture Guidelines provide concepts and reference for

optimum interoperability between European Institutions, European Agencies, and Administrations in

Member States.

Furthermore, IDABC published the final version 1.0 of its European Interoperability Framework

(EIF) in November 2004 (IDABC, 2004b). The EIF provides a common framework for discussion around

interoperability, pinpointing which interoperability issues should be addressed when implementing pan-

European egovernment services, but it avoids prescribing any concrete architecture or standard catalogue,

which was to be the main objective of successive releases of the Architecture Guidelines. Pan-European

would mean that a composite of national e-government services is made available to a European citizen

that may move to different Member States during his/her lifetime. The target audience of the EIF is the

managers of egovernment projects in Member States administrations and EU institutions.

The recommendations and guidelines of the EIF are mandatory for pan-European projects

carried out in the context of IDABC programme, which is financed by the EU and managed by the

European Commission. The EIF does not aim to replace national interoperability guidance but focuses on

supplementing them by adding the pan-European dimension. Anyway, the influence of EIF over national

interoperability frameworks is important.

Within the framework of this paper, the criterion that the EIF established for the selection of

standards for egovernment deployment is relevant. The EIF states that one of the underlying principles is

“the use of open standards”. The prescription of open standards is an issue that has generated controversy

between the community of civil servants that cooperated in the management of the egovernment projects

of the IDABC programme and the ICT industry. The EIF defines open standards as those having the

following minimum characteristics6:

1. Adopted and maintained by a non-profit organisation with a decision making process open to

all interested parties

2. Published specification document available at nominal or no charge

3. Patents irrevocably made available on a royalty free basis

4. No constraints on the re-use of the standard

6 Some implications of this controversial definition are discussed in the next section

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In spite of the clear stage defined by both the Architecture Guidelines and the EIF, the European

Commission sometimes makes an incoherent application of its own egovernment interoperability

guidelines outside the IDABC funded projects, as the following example illustrates. On the one hand, in

2002, the IDABC published an invitation to tender for the implementation of the portal of the EU

administration. The technical specifications made reference to the compliance of the Architecture

Guidelines in the following terms: “The Commission is committed to conform to international and

European standards for data interchange. Detailed conformance requirements for this call for tenders can

be found in the IDA Architecture Guidelines” (IDA, 2002). On the other hand, recent tenders for the

provision of websites for the European Commission, for instance, may require compatibility with the

europa.eu.int EU portal. As the portal is based on proprietary technologies (including ColdFusion from

Macromedia), a specific vendor preference has been introduced into the market even without mentioning

brand names (Ghosh, 2005).

The United Kingdom

Among the EU Member States, the United Kingdom was the first to setup and implement an

egovernment strategy7. The UK government, following a period of study and consultation, published its

egovernment strategy in 2000 (Cabinet Office, 2000). The strategy set up a structure at the central

government for implementing the strategy, and defined several key initiatives. As far as the

interoperability policy was concerned, the Cabinet Office executed its technical guidance through the e-

Government Interoperability Framework (e-GIF), which was first issued in 2000, and updated to its

version 6.1 in March 2005. e-GIF mandates sets of standards8 and policies for joined-up and web enabled

government9. It covers four areas: interconnectivity, data integration, e-services access and content

7 Apart from the fact that UK egovernment interoperability policy is regarded as a blueprint around EU, the UK case

deserves attention because the UK case and the EU institutions case differ from each other, as it is shown below.

8 e-GIF actually makes use of the term “specification”.

9 'Joined- up government' is a key theme of modern government. The Labour government, first elected in 1997,

decided that intractable problems such as social exclusion, drug addiction and crime could not be resolved by any

single department of government. Instead, such problems had to be made the object of a concerted attack using all the

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management (Cabinet Office, 2005). The e-GIF contains a Technical Standard Catalogue, which is

revised and updated every 6 months. The criteria for selecting standards that will be part of the e-GIF are

the following: interoperability, market support, scalability, openness and international standards.

Accordingly, the e-GIF explicitly gives preference to standards with the broadest remit, so appropriate

international standards will take preference over European standards, and European standards will take

preference over UK standards. Nevertheless, openness is defined only as specifications being documented

and available to the public, so that there is no requirement on an SDO producing a standard that may be

selected for inclusion in the e-GIF (Guijarro, 2005).

The e-GIF standards are mandated on all new systems that implement the exchange of

information between government systems and the interactions between them and citizens, businesses,

other governments, etc. There is a clear mandate from the UK Cabinet Office to comply with the e-GIF,

and this mandate also affects the procurement of such systems. Nevertheless, the ultimate responsibility

for compliance rests with the system’s senior responsible owner or sponsor. Compliance is by self-

regulation using normal departmental checking arrangements throughout the system’s development

lifecycle. Still, an e-GIF Compliance Advisory Service is provided by the National Computing Centre.

The service provides a structured web-based commentary about the e-GIF and a self-assessment

questionnaire10. As an example of the role that National Computing Centre plays, a guide on

procurement and interoperability has been published, where advice is given on how to ensure e-GIF

compliance during the whole system lifecycle, including the procurement process. For instance,

recommendations are given on how to make unambiguous reference to the e-GIF compliance in the

tender documents (NCC, 2006).

arms of government - central and local government and public agencies, as well as the private and voluntary sectors

(Bogdanor, 2005).

10 Full details of the service are available at http://www.egifcompliance.org.

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http://www.egifcompliance.org/

Standardisation and public procurement policy vs egovernment deployment

practices

In the third section, US and EU policies on standardisation and public procurement have been

described, and the influence that can be expected on egovernment deployment has been stated. The actual

implementation of egovernment interoperability policies has been presented in the previous section. In

this section, the expected influence of the standardisation and public procurement policies is checked

against the actual practices in egovernment deployment in both scenarios, the US and the EU.

As stated in the third section, both the US and the EU have endorsed the TBT Agreement.

However, the TBT implementation has resulted in different scenarios. While the role of the traditional

SDOs –mainly the three ESOs– is pre-eminent in the EU, the consortia play a more decisive role in the

US, since the working conditions are fairer. In the EU, the ESOs have decisive powers in implementing

the “New Approach” directives, which put the ESOs in charge of translating the “essential requirements”

laid down in the directives into European standards. Furthermore, in the EU Member States, although

there is no governmental standardisation agency, governments have close relationship with the SDOs that

have been recognised as NSBs. In the US, however, ANSI’s accredited SDOs lead the standardisation

system.

The above differences in standardisation systems have been shown to be translated to public

procurement regulations. In the US, the federal government is increasingly relying on voluntary

consensus standards against government-unique standards. In the EU, although government-unique

standards are non-existent, standards developed by NSBs and ESOs are taken as reference in public

procurement.

Being different to that extent, the influence of the standardisation and public procurement

policies on egovernment deployment has been shown to be different in the US from the EU. In the US,

federal government is not to have any influence on the selection of standards in egovernment systems and

services deployment. In the EU, it is expected that egovernment deployment will take advantage of the

public procurement regulations to harmonise egovernment technologies adoption, since the regulations

exhibit some preference to European standards.

From the description of the actual egovernment interoperability guidance, which has been

conducted in the previous section, we have found that, in the US, the federal government does not enforce

that egovernment technologies are based in voluntary consensus standards. On the contrary, any sort of

19

standard may be incorporated in egovernment systems deployment at federal agencies. This situation may

eventually have a negative impact in terms of interoperability. In the EU, we have found that there is not

a unique criterion among the EU institutions and Member State administrations, as far as the requirements

on egovernment technologies are concerned. Some governments, like the European Commission through

the IDABC programme, are stricter than public procurement regulations, whereas other governments, like

the UK government, are less strict. There is a problem of lack of harmonisation, which may have a

negative impact on interoperability at pan-European level.

In addition to being heterogeneous, some public administrations in the EU exhibit additional

problematic situations. This is the case of the European Commission. As it was explained in the fourth

section, the publication of the EIF opened a debate on which requirements should be met by open

standards. The European ICT Industry Association (EICTA) and the Business Software Alliance (BSA),

among others, use the example of GSM to argue in favour of standard adoption under licensing regimes

that require royalty payments and other condition, and which therefore depart from the EIF requirements

(BSA, 2005). This example is very relevant to our purpose, since GSM is an ETSI standard. Being a

standard published by ETSI means that it is a European standard and it is therefore an exemplifying case

of technical specification that may be referred to by tender documents in public procurement procedures,

according to the EU Directive that was explained above. This case exemplifies the lack of alignment in

the EU between the standardisation and public procurement policies and the egovernment interoperability

guidelines. A recent study on the specific policy need for ICT standardisation, commissioned by the

European Commission, reinforces this statement. As a diagnostic of the baseline scenario, the study noted

that “in all cases described above, the standards and standard deliverables referred to are those issued by

the European Standards Organisations. However, in recent years the emergence has been noted of new

EU policies and EU R&D projects which support the implementation of standards set by other

organisations; examples are the policy initiatives and subsequent actions in support of IPv6 and the

Recommendations concerning the implementation of WAI guidelines” (Piper, 2007).

Conclusions

The paper has conducted a study of the standardisation and public procurement policies in the

United States and the European Union, with the aim of finding whether and how they influence the

20

deployment of egovernment in the US and the EU, with a focus on the problem of interoperability. These

are the main results of the paper:

• In the US, the standardisation and public procurement regulations are coherently

applied in egovernment deployment, whereby voluntary-consensus standards are

prioritised against government-unique standards, although any other sort of industry

standards may be chosen.

• In the EU, there is a non-coherent implementation of the standardisation and public

procurement regulations in egovernment deployment. While the EU-wide regulations

exhibit preference to the European standards over any other sort of standard, some

governments often implement practices in egovernment deployment that are not aligned

to those regulations, and in some cases those practices are opposed to them.

Given these results, there is a risk that both the US and the EU fail to fulfill the interoperability

envisioned by their respective egoverment strategies. Egovernment deployment would end up in systems

that fail to provide interoperable services because do not adhere to either voluntary-consensus standards

in the US or European standards in the EU.

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Biography

Luis Guijarro.

Associate Professor in Telematics Engineering at the Communications Department of the Technical

University of Valencia (UPV), Spain. Lecturer on Information Society and Telecommunication Policy at

the Higher Technical School of Telecommunication Engineering of the UPV.

PhD in Telecommunications from the UPV (1998). His research is focused on policy and

engineering issues in the Information Society applications, specifically in e-Government, where he is

working on models, architectures and frameworks for enabling interoperability.

He has been consultant of the Valencian Regional Government and of the Spanish Ministry of

Public Administration in the area of egovernment, and he has participated as expert in several EU-funded

projects on good practice exchange in e-government.

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ICT standardisation and public procurement in the United States and in the European Union: influence on egovernment deploymentICT standardisation and public procurement in the United States and in the European Union: influence on egovernment deploymentEGOV20j-TitlePage.pdfICT standardisation and public procurement in the United States and in the European Union: influence on egovernment deployment