Public and Private Procurement in the Context of the ...sectordialogues.org/sites/default/files/acoes/... · to government (B2G), and business-to-business (B2B) commerce. SEMPE’s

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Public and Private Procurement in the Context of the Industrial Internet

MINISTRY OF GOVERNMENT SECRETARIAT

MINISTER OF STATEGEDDEL VIEIRA LIMA

SECRETARY OF MICRO AND SMALL ENTERPRISESJOSÉ RICARDO DA VEIGA

DIRECTOR OF MARKETS AND INNOVATIONALEXANDRE MONTEIRO E SILVA

TECHNICAL SUPPORT TEAMFABIO MEDEIROS DE SOUZA (GENERAL-COORDINATOR OF MARKETS ACCESS)

CARLOS VELOSO DE MELO JR. (FOREIGN TRADE ANALYST)JANIO MOREIRA DA COSTA (INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ANALYST)

EUROPEAN UNION DELEGATION TO BRAZIL

HEAD OF THE EUROPEAN UNION DELEGATIONJOÃO GOMES CRAVINHO

MINISTER COUNSELLOR - HEAD OF DEVELOPMENT AND COOPERATION SECTION THIERRY DUDERMEL

COOPERATION ATTACHÉ – EU-BRAZIL SECTOR DIALOGUES SUPPORT FACILITY COORDINATORASIER SANTILLAN LUZURIAGA IMPLEMENTING CONSORTIUM

CESO DEVELOPMENT CONSULTANTS/FIIAPP/INA/CEPS

MINISTRY OF PLANNING, DEVELOPMENT AND MANAGEMENT

MINISTER OF STATEDYOGO OLIVEIRA

SECRETARY OF MANAGEMENTGLEISSON CARDOSO RUBIN

PROJECT NATIONAL DIRECTOR

MARCELO MENDES BARBOSA

CONTACTS:PROJECT COORDINATION UNIT

EUROPEAN UNION-BRAZIL SECTOR DIALOGUES SUPPORT FACILITYSECRETARIAT OF PUBLIC MANAGEMENT

MINISTRY OF PLANNING, DEVELOPMENT AND MANAGEMENTTELEPHONE: + 55 61 2020.4645/4168/4785

[email protected]

THE CONTENT OF THIS PUBLICATION DOES NOT REFLECT THE OFFICIAL OPINION OF THE EUROPEAN UNION AND THE BRAZILIAN GOVERNMENT. RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE INFORMATION AND VIEWS

EXPRESSED THEREIN LIES ENTIRELY WITH THE AUTHOR.

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Public and PrivateProcurement in the Context

of the Industrial Internet

Author: Zoltan Patkai, [email protected]

Date: 23 March 2016


Contents1. Background................................................................................10

Objective of the report .................................................................................. 12Specific objectives: ....................................................................................... 12Deliverables: ................................................................................................. 13Short-term results: ........................................................................................ 13Long-term results: ........................................................................................ 13

2. Methodology ..............................................................................132.1. Approach ................................................................................................ 132.2. Output .................................................................................................... 14

3. PCCS relevance and impact on the economic system. .........143.1. Extensive and intensive use of e-business standards and protocols in the future - Industry 4.0 ....................................................................................... 143.1.1. ICT standardization ............................................................................. 173.1.2. eCl@ss and its importance for Industry 4.0 ....................................... 183.2. PCCS Contribution to productivity increase ........................................... 203.3. How PCCS minimize intra and inter-firma transaction costs along supply/value chains. .......................................................................................................... 213.4. PCCS relevance to developing countries with a wide industrial basis like Brazil ............................................................................................................. 223.5. PCCS relevance to technology transfer and innovation ......................... 233.6. PCCS relevance to reinforce economic ties in a given “sphere of co-prosperity” ..................................................................................................... 24

4. PCCS relevance and impact on business procurement ........254.1. Types of PCCS ....................................................................................... 274.2. PCCS impacts on business procurement .............................................. 284.2.1. Impact considerations: ........................................................................ 284.3. Key findings by sector ............................................................................ 33

5. European Product Classification andCatalogue Systems – EU PCCS ...................................................36

5.1. The role of Product Classification in Catalogues.................................... 365.1.1. eCatalogues and Classification in the pre-award process .................. 385.1.2. eCatalogues and Classification in the post-award process ................. 405.2. eCatalogue interoperability benefits ....................................................... 41

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5.3. A critical analysis of the overall taxonomic structure of each PCCS ...... 415.3.1. Common Procurement Vocabulary (CPV)18 ...................................... 425.3.1.1. Objective .......................................................................................... 435.3.1.2. Main Usage ...................................................................................... 435.3.1.3. Coding Structure20 .......................................................................... 445.3.1.3.1. The main vocabulary ..................................................................... 445.3.1.3.2. The supplementary vocabulary ..................................................... 455.3.1.4. CPV Implementation21 .................................................................... 455.3.1.4.1. Search .......................................................................................... 465.3.1.5. Release policy .................................................................................. 465.3.1.6. Version compatibility ........................................................................ 465.3.1.7. Change management process ......................................................... 475.3.1.8. Conditions of use ............................................................................. 475.3.1.9. Access to CPV22 ............................................................................. 475.3.2. GS1 Global Product Classification (GPC) ........................................... 485.3.2.1. Objectives ........................................................................................ 485.3.2.2. Main Usage ...................................................................................... 485.3.2.2.1. GPC in Global (Catalogue) Data Synchronisation Network - GDSN related processes .......................................................................................... 495.3.2.3. Coding Structure .............................................................................. 515.3.2.3.1. GPC Hierarchies ........................................................................... 515.3.2.4. Implementation ................................................................................. 535.3.2.5. Release policy .................................................................................. 555.3.2.6. Version compatibility ........................................................................ 565.3.2.7. Change Management Process ......................................................... 565.3.2.8. Conditions of use ............................................................................. 565.3.2.9. Access .............................................................................................. 575.3.3. UNSPSC27 ......................................................................................... 575.3.3.1. Objectives ........................................................................................ 585.3.3.2. Main Usage ...................................................................................... 585.3.3.2.1. Spend analysis .............................................................................. 595.3.3.2.2. United Nations Global Marketplace (UNGM28)introduced UNSPSC as of November 201229 .............................................. 59


5.3.3.2.3. Office of Small and Medium Enterprises (OSME)of Public Works and Government Services Canada willmigrate to UNSPSC codes in 201730 ........................................................... 605.3.3.2.4. UNSPSC Usage Roadmap 2015-1631 ......................................... 605.3.3.2.5. UNSPSC in GS1 Global (Catalogue)Data Synchronization Network (GDSN)32 .................................................... 605.3.3.3. Coding Structure .............................................................................. 615.3.3.4. Implementation ................................................................................. 625.3.3.4.1. Search support .............................................................................. 635.3.3.5. Release policy .................................................................................. 645.3.3.6. Version compatibility ........................................................................ 645.3.3.7. Change management process ........................................................ 645.3.3.8. Conditions of use ............................................................................. 655.3.3.9. Access .............................................................................................. 655.3.4. eCl@ss36 ..............................................................................................................................65

5.3.4.1. Objectives ........................................................................................ 665.3.4.2. Main Usage37 .................................................................................. 665.3.4.2.1. Procurement (public) ..................................................................... 665.3.4.2.2. Catalogue data exchange ........................................................... 675.3.4.3. Coding structure ............................................................................... 675.3.4.4 Release policy ................................................................................... 695.3.4.5. Version compatibility ........................................................................705.3.4.6. Change management process ......................................................... 705.3.4.7. Implementation ................................................................................. 715.3.4.8. Conditions of use41 ......................................................................... 715.3.4.9. Access .............................................................................................. 715.4. Advantages and disadvantages of each PCCS ..................................... 725.4.1. General functioning ............................................................................. 725.4.1.1. CPV .................................................................................................. 725.4.1.2. GPC ................................................................................................. 725.4.1.3. UNSPSC .......................................................................................... 725.4.1.4. eCl@ss ............................................................................................. 735.4.2. Search ................................................................................................. 73

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5.4.2.1. CPV .................................................................................................. 735.4.2.2. GPC ................................................................................................. 735.4.2.3. UNSPSC .......................................................................................... 735.4.2.4. eCl@ss ............................................................................................. 745.4.3. Level of details (number of codes) ...................................................... 745.4.3.1. CPV .................................................................................................. 755.4.3.2. GPC ................................................................................................. 755.4.3.3. UNSPSC .......................................................................................... 755.4.3.4. eCl@ss ............................................................................................. 755.4.4. Coverage and completeness .............................................................. 765.4.4.1. CPV .................................................................................................. 775.4.4.2. GPC ................................................................................................. 785.4.4.3. UNSPSC .......................................................................................... 785.4.4.4. eCl@ss ............................................................................................. 785.4.5. Cross-border procurement support ..................................................... 785.4.5.1. CPV .................................................................................................. 785.4.5.2. GPC ................................................................................................. 795.4.5.3. UNSPSC .......................................................................................... 795.4.5.4. eCl@ss ............................................................................................. 795.4.6. Below threshold procurement support ................................................ 795.4.6.1. CPV .................................................................................................. 795.4.6.2. GPC ................................................................................................. 805.4.6.3. UNSPSC .......................................................................................... 805.4.6.4. eCl@ss ............................................................................................. 80

6. PCCS Information (Semantic) Interoperability48 ....................806.1. Semantic Interoperability and ontology .................................................. 816.2. Ontology for E-Commerce ..................................................................... 826.3. Semantic Interoperability in the EuropeanInteroperability Framework53 ........................................................................ 836.4. Information (Semantic) Interoperability inEuropean eGovernment systems55 ............................................................... 876.4.1. Core Vocabularies ............................................................................... 876.4.2. The DCAT Application Profile for data portals (DCAT-AP) .................. 87


6.4.3. The Asset Description Metadata Schema (ADMS) ............................. 886.5. ISA2 ........................................................................................................ 886.5.1. e-TrustEx60 ....................................................................................... 896.5.2. Digital Public Services across borders62 ............................................ 906.5.4 The Portuguese eProcurement Solution65 .......................................... 93

6.6. European Commission’s Joinup Collaborative Platform66 .................... 946.6.1. Joinup Benefits .................................................................................... 966.6.2. Who is already sharing76? .................................................................. 96

7. Interoperability benefits of PCCSin the Procurement Process .........................................................96

7.1.1. Spend analysis and visibility ............................................................... 977.1.2. Enable catalogue data exchange, harmonisation andsynchronisation processes ............................................................................ 987.1.3. Supports master data management and product orservice information management .................................................................. 987.1.4. Control and Uniformity across the organisation .................................. 987.1.5. Cross referencing with existing classification systems ........................ 997.1. Facilitate all external facing communication ........................................... 99

8. CPV interoperability with other taxonomies ...........................998.1 Evaluation of the interoperability of CPV with other taxonomies and the potential of using other PCCS simultaneously ............................................ 1018.1.1. Mapping challenges ..........................................................................1028.1.2. Mapping methodology .......................................................................1028.1.2.1. Mapping architecture ......................................................................1038.1.3. Mapping results ................................................................................. 1048.1.3.1. Mapping relationship among the 4 classification systems ............. 1048.1.3.2. Mapping example ...........................................................................1068.1.3.3. Main findings from the mapping exercise ....................................... 1078.2. PCCS Strategy ..................................................................................... 1088.2.1. Harmonization Strategy .....................................................................1098.2.2. Interoperability Strategy .................................................................... 110

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9. Suggested scenarios for Brazil .............................................. 11210. The perspectives of SMEs to improve theiraccess to public procurement markets ..................................... 114

10.1. EU Projects related to eProcurement83 ............................................. 11410.2. E-Business Standard and Protocols (EBSP)related obstacles and tools for SMEs .......................................................... 11510.3. EU Commission takes action to open up international markets89 ..... 11610.4. PROZEUS90 to support SMEs ........................................................... 11710.5. CEN Focus Group eSMEs92 ......................................................................................118

10.6. PEPPOL supports SMEs with a Toolbox ............................................ 12011. Overview of the use of PCCS in the Oil & Gas sector .......120

11.1. cMap mapping table results................................................................ 12011.1.1. Petroleum products, fuel, electricity and othersources of energy mapping93 .....................................................................12011.1.2. Oil and Gas services mapping......................................................... 12211.2. PIDX .................................................................................................. 12211.2.1. PIDX Interoperability with UNSPSC ................................................ 124

12. Conclusion .............................................................................12613. References .............................................................................12714. Annexes ..................................................................................131

14.1. Annex 1: PEPPOL Laptop Data Set Example .................................... 13114.2. Annex 2: cMap Mapping Statistics ..................................................... 13214.3. Joinup FAQs ...................................................................................... 13414.4. Abbreviations ...................................................................................... 144


1. Background

According to Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) surveys, the entrepreneurship spirit of the general population in Brazil is higher than that of the G20 economies. Yet, the Brazilian business ecosystem is not sufficiently favourable to the expansion and even the long-term survival of entrepreneurial ventures, particularly small businesses. That stems from a number of factors, many of which requiring durable corrective policies aimed at long-term results.

A number of international metrics, most notably the “Ease of Doing Business” Index, in which Brazil occupies a dismal 120 position out of the 189 economies evaluated (2015), has exposed the less than encouraging entrepreneurial ambiance in Brazil for micro and small enterprises.

Thus, given that entrepreneurship is a crucial component of a healthy business ecosystem conducive to the consolidation of a globally competitive economy, the Brazilian Government, in partnership with the private sector, has set about developing and implementing a series of business facilitation initiatives, with a particular attention to small businesses.

Those initiatives are carried out by the Presidency-attached Secretariat of Micro and Small Enterprises (SEMPE). SEPME is strongly oriented towards the provision of e-platforms, which could substantially reduce transaction costs inherent to business to government (B2G), and business-to-business (B2B) commerce.

SEMPE’s main platforms - Portal Empresa Simples (PES, Portuguese acronym: Doing Business the Simple Way) is an umbrella web facility where multiple business-orientated services are made available to the public.

By means of the Brazilian E-Marketplace (a key component of PES), SMPE will facilitate the access of small enterprises to domestic and foreign markets (public procurement included). In this context, SMPE understands that the Action Proposal herein formalized (PMEE0007), will result in relevant information for initiatives of the Ministry of Industry (MDIC) and the Ministry of Planning (MPOG) under the aegis of the Sector Dialogues (8th edition), respectively “Comparative Study on E-Commerce Issues involving SME in Brazil and the EU” (PMEE0005) and “Public Procurement” (PMEE0004).

With this “virtual marketplace”, to be made operational in 2017, SMPE aims at reducing substantially the transaction cost inherent to B2G and B2B exchanges, specifically business matching costs (producers finding buyers or vice-versa). Indeed, the aforementioned costs are disproportionally onerous to small businesses due to market and government failures that contribute considerably to the higher mortality rate between small business and lesser productivity in the economic system as a whole.

The Brazilian E-Marketplace will facilitate business matching by the use of a Product

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Classification and Catalogue System (PCCS). Goods, services, and goods plus services aggregates are herein considered as products.

Thus, the Brazilian E-Marketplace will contribute to the dissemination of e-business standards and protocols (EBSTP) in domestic and global operations. Only the use of EBSTP permits the efficient exchange of information between companies and organizations; moreover, they promote transparency in processes and contribute to significantly reducing the costs for providing information and also the transaction and process costs. Worldwide, the general use of EBSTP (of which PCCSs are a subset) is the future of industry, but Brazil still lags behind in this theme, what has been hindering economic prosperity.

The Brazilian PCCS will be constructed or adapted by SEMPE and partners having in prospect the specifics of the Brazilian industry; nevertheless having selected characteristics of widely accepted PCCS as CPV (Common Public Procurement Vocabulary of the EU), UNSPSC (United Nations Standard Products and Services Code - used worldwide, particularly in the USA) , GPC (Global Product Classification is part of the GS1 System used worldwide, it is the barcode PCCS) or eCl@ss (widely used by German corporations) The correlation and/or interoperability of the Brazilian PCCS with internationally validated PCCS is absolutely required the use of the Brazilian E-Marketplace as an effective facilitator of international B2G and B2B exchanges.

This Action is pertinent to the work of the EU Publications Office (CPV), European Committee for Standardization (interoperability of PCCS), etc. It can facilitate further institutional and business partnerships concerning the dissemination of European expertise on EBSTP issues. For instance, SMPE envisages that the PROZEUS (Prozesse und Standards) - a German initiative focusing on SME’s ebusiness needs - has an outstanding potential of dissemination in Brazil, with direct economic and technology impacts.

SEMPE understands that the development of PCCSs in Brazil and Mercosur in convergence with PCCSs of widespread industrial acceptance in the European Union might significantly facilitate the integration of supply chains encompassing both regions.

Moreover, the results of the investigation will be instrumental to forward institutional cooperation on PCCS issues with a number of entities at the multilateral and bilateral level. Trilateral cooperation involving a third part in Latin America and/or Africa is also a possibility. For this purpose, the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC) shall be involved.

Action PMEE0007 is based on exchanging information and know-how about PCCSs issues, thus facilitating future exchanges between relevant stakeholders involved in specific aspects of PCCS issues. This was carried through with a focus on know-how and capability building, both in the government and in the private sector. Though directly linked to the Dialogue on Small and Medium Enterprises, the Action was developed in convergence with the Brazil-EU Sector Dialogue on Industrial and Regulatory Issues.


The Action is accomplished by an investigation of a number of issues affecting CVP, UNSPSC, GPC/GS1 and eCl@ss deemed relevant to the development of a Brazilian PCCS for public and private procurement. Based on the results of the investigation and in view of the institutional and business Brazilian context, recommendations to be development of a Brazilian PCCS were made.

The aforementioned issues and related recommendations include:

• economic and business PCCS relevance in Europe and worldwide;

• level of business adherence to each PCCS;

• economic assumptions and business rationales of specific PCCS;

• advantages and disadvantages of each PCCS vis-à-vis each other;

• Interoperability of PCCS, particularly the work that the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) has been done in this area.

Objective of the report The overall objective of Action PMEE0007 is to contribute to informed governmental and private decisions concerning the development of a product classification and catalogue system (PCCS) - to be made available on an e-platform - which shall reduce transaction costs inherent to public and private procurement.

Benchmarking of the European experience regarding PCCS implementation opportunities in Brazil could result an effective and cost-efficient PCCS for B2G and B2B purposes.

SMPE, together with the Federal Data Processing Service (Serpro), are currently developing the knowledge organization system (KOS) that will underpin the Brazilian version of the CPV. The team in charge of the aforementioned KOS has in prospect the need of future harmonization and interoperability with existing classification standards of compulsory use in Brazil for public procurement at the federal level (Comprasnet) and for foreign trade registry (NCM and NBS). The PCCS herein discussed will be a facet of the Brazilian E-Marketplace, a web platform featuring diverse services aiming at small enterprises. This facet will be operational by 2016 (version 1.0)

Specific objectives: 1. Start information and knowledge exchanges between Brazil and the EU (and its member states) in the areas related to PCCS. These exchanges shall involve the public and private sectors and develop:

(i) in the short term, towards enhanced mutual understanding of governance frameworks;

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(ii) in the medium term, towards the development/adaptation/optimization of technically sound and ebusiness effective PCCS;

(iii) in the long term, towards enhanced Brazil-EU value chains integration with a significant participation of micro and small enterprises;

2. Provide SMPE and its European counterpart with the tools necessary for starting the aforementioned exchanges;

3. Linkage and harmonization of PCCS issues with other Brazil-EU economic joint initiatives. This should include horizontal issues as well as sector-specific matters. It should take account of existing industrial co-operation with bilateral and multilateral frameworks particularly those under the umbrella of the Brazil-EU Joint Action Plan (JAP) and Brazil-EU Business Agenda, this one as defined by Brazil-EU Business Summits and bilateral business colloquia as, e.g., the Brazilian-German Economic Meeting.

Deliverables:

Short-term results: (i) a report on the economic and business significance of the use/dissemination

of PCCS, including the integration of enterprises in supply/value chain, with emphasis on the perspectives of small enterprises and;

(ii) a report on knowledge architecture aspects relevant to the development of a Brazilian PCCS

Long-term results: (i) increased institutional and business knowledge and capabilities in the PCCS in

Brazil, Europe, and possibly third parties (see Context above);

(ii) increased value/supply chain integration between Brazil, Europe, and possibly third parties (via both public and private procurement).

2. Methodology

2.1. Approach• Knowledge acquisition, know-how transfer and institutional and business

capability building in Brazil across EBSP themes in close collaboration with SMPE and other stakeholders according to an agreed timeline detailed below.


2.2. Output• One Report on the European experience with CPV, GPC/GS1, UNSPSC eCl@ss

(Product Classification and Catalogue Systems - PCCS)

• One seminar to be conducted in Brazil

3. PCCS relevance and impact on the economic system.

This chapter explains PCCS relevance and / or impact on the economic system as a whole

3.1. Extensive and intensive use of e-business standards and protocols in the future - Industry 4.0The future-oriented initiative Industry 4.0 is the vision of the digital future of the world economy.

Figure 1: 4th Industrial Revolution

Industry 4.0 (Industrie 4.0 in German) is located at the convergence of Big Data & analytics, Cyber Physical Systems (intelligent devices in manufacturing) and Internet of Things (IoT – all devices connected via the internet)

1 Adapted from http://www.profibus.com/nc/download/brochures-white-paper/downloads/arc-white-paper/display/

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Figure 2: Industry 4.01

The aim of Industry 4.0 is to exploit the potential resulting from

• the extensive use of the internet,

• the integration of technical processes and business processes,

• the digital mapping and virtualization of the real world, and

• the opportunity to create “smart” products and means of production.

The terms Internet and World Wide Web (WWW) are often used interchangeably in everyday speech. The Web is a collection of interconnected documents (web pages) and other web resources, linked by hyperlinks and URLs. WWW is only one of a large number of Internet services. The Internet is the global system of interconnected mainframe, personal, and wireless computer networks that use the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to link billions of devices worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope, linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless, and optical networking technologies.

The German Standardization Roadmap Industry 4.02 was crafted by DIN /DKE (German Standardization Committee) Steering Group in order to provide all actors with an overview of the relevant standards in the area of Industry 4.0. The fundamental objective is to utilize the progress achieved in ICT technologies.

They focus on three+1 characteristics : Horizontal integration, Vertical integration, Consistent engineering +1 (Qualification for people)

Horizontal integration: Ad-hoc added-value networks optimized in real time

2 https://www.dke.de/de/std/Documents/RM_Industrie%2040_V2_EN.pdf


Figure 3: Horizontal Integration

Vertical integration: Business processes and technical processes

Figure 4: Vertical Integration

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Continuity of consistent engineering throughout the life cycle

Figure 5: Consistent Engineering

3.1.1. ICT standardizationICT standards are consensus-based standards and specifications are developed and continuously updated by the subcommittees of the DIN Standards Committee and its international counterpart, the ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee (ISO/IEC JTC 1).

Internet of Things (IoT). In the field of automatic identification and data collection (AIDC) ISO/IEC 15459 and ISO/IEC 29161 connected to Industry 4.0

Figure 6: IoT Services for Industry 4.0


Cloud as a new storage technology - The standards established in JTC 1/SC 38 (ISO/IEC 19944) enable the use of cloud technologies Big Data. In ISO/IEC JTC 1/WG 9, fundamental principles are established on the evaluation of data collected in an unstructured form for optimization of production and logistics processes (ISO/IEC 20547).

The Reference Architecture Model for Industry 4.0 (RAMI)3

It is recommended that all relevant standards, specifications and use cases should be incorporated within RAMI4.0.

3 http://www.omg.org/news/meetings/tc/berlin-15/special-events/mfg-presentations/adolphs.pdf

3.1.2. eCl@ss and its importance for Industry 4.0 At the development of the RAMI 4.0 model, a couple of individual aspects were considered in detail:

• Approach for implementation of an Information Layer

- IEC Common Data Dictionary (IEC 61360 Series/ISO13584-42)

- Characteristics, classification and tools to eCl@ss

- Electronic Device Description (EDD)

- Field Device Tool (FDT)

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• Approach for end-to-end engineering

- AutomationML

- ProSTEP iViP

- eCl@ss (characteristics)

The method and depth of description of the metadata are particularly important in the context of Industry 4.0. Generally applicable, simple concepts are required here. The characteristics models are of central importance both for interoperability and for a wider ranging comparison of technological statements, as characteristics are a central part of the future Industry 4.0 semantics.

In IEC 61360-1/2 and ISO 13584-42, comprehensive rules for the stipulation of characteristics are described. Both standards have been harmonized in terms of content, with the result that characteristics established in ISO or IEC in accordance with those documents are identically structured.

In IEC, furthermore, there is a complete infrastructure for the creation, modification and provision of characteristics in the form of the Common Data Dictionary (CDD). In ISO and IEC, there are a series of characteristics projects which are yet uncoordinated. The classification project by eCl@ss e. V., originally founded for purchasing purposes, has developed significantly in recent years, especially with Version 9.0, in the direction of characteristics with very good tool support. The results of work by the now defunct PROLIST e. V. have been taken over in full. All the characteristics of the around 30 fields of business in eCl@ss are specified in accordance with IEC 61360.

Therefore eCl@ss is a building block for Industry 4.0. Machine identifiable and interchangeable information formats make intelligent manufacturing networks in digitalized factory come true. Information format can be applied to more than one system (ERP, PLM, MES, logistics and automatic production). eCl@ss provides a solid semantics (common vocabulary) foundation for electronic product data exchange in Industry 4.0 implementations.

In Germany, however, it is not only eCl@ss, which is dealing with questions of semantics. The objective must be a “semantic alliance” of all the institutions involved with this topic, aimed at contributing the results to the international standardization at IEC and ISO. This alliance should also take account of technologies such as Linked Data as an additional representation format, without giving up existing semantic models, e.g. on the basis of XML.

Cross-component and cross-system communications and interaction schemata are of central importance in Industry 4.0. The systems involved have to be designed interoperable and behave in that way during operation.


3.2. PCCS Contribution to productivity increaseProductivity in general is a ratio of output to input in the production of goods and services. Productivity is increased by lowering the amount of labour, capital, energy or materials that go into producing economic goods. Increases in productivity are largely responsible for the increase in per capita living standards.

Micro-level data is now used to study the relationship between PCCS and company performance in a number of countries. These studies draw on both official and private data sources and use different methodologies. Recent examples of some of the different approaches include a Eurostat funded ICT impact assessment by linking data across sources and 13 countries . The results show at high-level additional productivity effects associated with ICT through competitive substitution over and above internal effects.

The survey applied an OECD adaptation framework , which uses three terms: impact, intensity/use and readiness.

• Impact: changes in behaviour, economic structure and performance as result of use

• Intensity / use: measures of the proportion of organisations, individuals who adopt, and the amount of use

• Readiness: ability of organisations, individuals, government to adopt technology

Figure 7: OECD Adaptation Framework

In this survey they defined four productivity variables:

• LPQ: Labour productivity based on real sales

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• LPV: Labour productivity based on value added

• TFP: Value added with capital and labour

• MFP: Gross output with capital, labour and materials

Figure 8: Data availability for Productivity by country

The results show that impacts are differentiated by organisation type:

• in manufacturing, intensity of e-procurement shows the strongest link to productivity;

• in distribution services the largest impact on productivity is related to the intensity of use of e-commerce PCCS for selling;

• in other, mainly business and financial, service industries the strongest relationship with productivity comes from the proportion of workers with access to high-speed internet;

• across all three industry types, IT capital (including software) is positively related to productivity levels in the UK, and with a much larger impact in differentiated services;

• for all three types in the Netherlands analysis IT capital (excluding software) is insignificant.

The survey demonstrated that linked micro-data could be used at the firm level for analysis of productivity effects associated with ICT and with complementary inputs. While productivity effects associated with ICT in manufacturing are becoming standardised across Europe, reflecting success in creating a single EU market and international value chains for goods, there is much less commonality in services. E-commerce (sales and PCCS driven purchases) and e-business links within and between firms also show productivity impacts, with effects of e-sales and e-purchases that are consistent and reflect changes in business behaviour. Productivity impacts can be associated with e-business process links, especially between firms.

3.3. How PCCS minimize intra and inter-firma transaction costs along supply/value chains. Supply chain management has evolved from business necessity to one of the


primary focus areas for enhancing competitive advantage. In the 1980s and 1990s, most companies focused their inter-firma supply chain initiatives on reengineering supply chain cost structures. These initiatives were driven primarily by corporate restructuring and internal improvement as company strategies responded to the accelerated opening of global markets. Through intra-company optimization, companies have engineered and reengineered their business practices to enhance overall performance. By implementing internal system solutions such as PCCS, ERP and supply chain planning and -execution systems, company management can make informed business decisions. Inter-firma optimization extends real-time information throughout the organization, ensuring synergy among operations, finance, sales, purchasing and customer service. This allows all departments to work as a cohesive unit lowering operating costs and maximizing customer satisfaction. Unfortunately, inter-firma optimization often pushes costs out to the disadvantage of trading partners upstream or downstream.

ECR (“Efficient Consumer Response”) movement effectively began in the mid-nineties and was characterized by emergence of new principles of collaborative management along the inter-firma supply chain. It was understood that companies could serve consumers better, faster and at less cost by working together with trading partners

When the PCCS supports a trading relationship, some of the potential benefits that can be expected are:

• Enforces standard identification of the trade item though the entire supply chain.

• Facilitates and improves master data alignment between trading partners.

• Facilitates product search and new product introduction.

• Supports Computer Assisted Ordering (CAO).

• Automates support of price-look-up (PLU) files.

• Optimizes exploitation of space management (in the store and warehouse).

• Improves Direct Product Profitability (DPP) calculations.

• Facilitates the auditing and loading of trade and logistic units in the store and warehouse.

• Enables the use of many Efficient Consumer Response (ECR) techniques.

3.4. PCCS relevance to developing countries with a wide industrial basis like BrazilUnited Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) published an Information Economy Report in 20157. In this report the address the potential of e-commerce for developing countries, global and regional trends, e-commerce

7 http://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/ier2015_en.pdf

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readiness measures, SME opportunities, legal landscape, strategy and policy implications with some statistics. PCCS can provide opportunities for suppliers in developing countries to access export market and international supply chains. Example: IndiaMart.com, EC21.com, Alibaba.com.

Main recommendations:

• Align e-transaction laws

• Streamline consumer protection policies

• Streamlining data protection and cybercrime policies

• Strengthening the capacity of lawmakers and judiciary

• Enhancing the awareness of consumers and companies

World Trade Organization (WTO) published a report titled ‘e-commerce in developing countries’8 in 2013. In this report opportunities and challenges for SMEs were highlighted. Main findings:

• Access to the internet and smart phones help improve the livelihood of the poor SMEs through better communications and greater access to information. Many poor farmers are now able to receive better prices for their crops because they have access to information on market prices

• SMEs are not alone in their involvement with e commerce. The government and the private sector have vital roles to play not only in allowing e commerce to take place but to ensure that it grows and benefits not only SMEs but also consumers. Much of the support to e-commerce depends on having or providing the right infrastructure, regulations and the policy mix allowing e-commerce to thrive.

• Also required is a workforce with solid ICT skills. Such skills are crucial for the further development of e-commerce and other mobile applications.

• Governments in all developing countries can play a vital role in ensuring that secondary and vocational schools teach the necessary skills to help build a viable digital economy and one that is capable of adapting to the needs of its users.

3.5. PCCS relevance to technology transfer and innovationTechnology transfer usually involves some source of technology, created and owned by a group, which possess specialized technical skills. This group then transfers the technology to a target group of receptors who do not possess those specialized technical skills, and who therefore cannot create the tool themselves.

Typical varieties of technology transfer:

8 https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/ecom_brochure_e.pdf


• International technology transfer: the transfer of technologies developed in one country to firms or other organizations in another country.

• From industrial nations to less-developed countries, usually for accelerating economic and industrial development in the poor nations of the world.

• Private technology transfer: the sale or other transfer of a technology from one company to another.

• Public-private technology transfer: the transfer of technology from universities or government laboratories to companies.

The major categories of technology transfer and commercialization involve the transfer of:

• technology codified and embodied in tangible artefacts

• processes for implementing technology

• knowledge and skills that provide the basis for technology and process development

Some mechanisms for technology transfer: Licensing, Strategic supplier agreement. Contract R:D, Research agreement

The main role of PCCS in technology transfer is an enabling role by which industry can accelerate its innovation activities and gain competitive advantage through cooperation. It can also boost overall economic growth and regional economic development.

3.6. PCCS relevance to reinforce economic ties in a given “sphere of co-prosperity”PCCS has enabled companies to change their traditional centralized structures to a more decentralized one, allowing employees to realize their requisitions directly from their workplaces applying web applications, whereas companies could establish specific rights and budgets to their internal customers to place orders, their supervisors to authorize the requisition, the warehouse to acknowledge the delivery and the finance department to emit and pay the invoice.

e-Procurement solutions are adequate to support the purchase of indirect, low value and standard products. These products represent around 5% of the purchasing volume, but generate up to 80% of the total purchasing process costs of a company, 60% of the orders and 70% of the suppliers. Services and complex products are currently not appropriately supported by those systems, or the eProcurement of the former products is possible just with a high level of system customization. The core component is the PCCS catalogue engine to search and select goods online, and in case the organization applies a multi supplier catalogue approach, the content 9 http://www.sourceoneinc.com/downloads/Procurement_Outsourcing_Report.pdf10 http://www.perfect.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/The-CPOs-Agenda-for-2012.and-Beyond.pdf

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management system to create and maintain the catalogue data. Furthermore, the system relies on business rules and authorization mechanisms to support organizations directives and specific purchase processes.

The integration of those systems is supported by the application of standards as the Extensible Mark-up Language (XML). Currently, there are several data exchange formats based on XML e.g. xCBL, cXML, BMEcat.

On the other hand, to facilitate the electronic product information transfer, companies rely on PCCS standards such as GPC, eCl@ss and UNSPSC to increase transparency and reduce communication costs.

4. PCCS relevance and impact on business procurement

With today’s focus on efficiency, lean “just in time” inventories, outsourcing, supply base reduction, centralized distribution, more products with faster launches, low cost country sourcing and supply chain globalization in highly volatile markets, companies need e-Sourcing and eProcurement now more than ever before. Especially when customers expect prices to remain the same (or drop) while product quality and capability increases; or when investors expect EPS (earnings per share) to continue increasing despite inflation and flat prices; or when management expects profits to increase quarter after quarter despite rising salaries in a tight marketplace. In today’s world, it has become vitally important for organizations to make the right sourcing decisions – especially when there is more and more focus (and visibility) on the bottom-line.

In today’s business environment many companies now spend more than half their operating costs on direct materials, indirect materials and services, with manufacturing companies typically spending between 50 and 70 percent of revenue on direct purchases. (Aberdeen Group, The Procurement Outsourcing Benchmark Report9).With all these pressures, often the only way to improve the bottom-line is to reduce spending through strategic sourcing methodologies. After all, every dollar under control of procurement yields a 5 to 20% savings. (Aberdeen Group, The CPO’s Agenda Report10).

A.T. Kearney’s guide for e-sourcing best practices, Jumpstarting Your eSourcing Initiative11, indicates that e-sourcing is an essential part of any strategic sourcing process:

• E-sourcing increases % of spend sourced from 0-35% to as much as 98%.

• The time per sourcing event decreases from weeks/months to hours/days.

• Cost savings may be 15%+ after e-sourcing implementation.

After interviewing over 400 enterprises, Aberdeen’s E-Procurement Benchmark Report12 found that e-sourcing provides the following benefits:

11 http://www.atkearneypas.com/knowledge/publications/2010/2010_07_JumpStartingYoureSourcingInitiative.pdf12 http://onget.net/documents/Aberdeen_eproc_sept2008.pdf


• Requisition-to-order costs decreased by 49%.

• Requisition-to-order cycle time decreased by 65%.

• Spend under management increased by 43%.

• Percentages of maverick spend decreased by 39%.

The Hackett Group conducted an e-procurement poll13 recently and discovered e-sourcing led to improvements in the following areas:

• Compliance to indirect preferred contracts increased by 20% on average.

• Number of orders processed per buyer increased by an average of 38%.

• Data management efficiency increased by 15% on average.

In order to demonstrate the PCCS driven e-Procurement relevance and impact on Business Procurement the Value Chain could be an appropriate tool. The value chain is a series of value-generating activities within the business system. The flowchart below shows the contribution of each player in the chain.

Primary processes:

1. DELIVER Inbound: the activities of receiving and storing raw materials, components and parts, and their distribution to production (MAKE operations) when and as required;

13 http://www.sap.com/bin/sapcom/de_de/downloadasset.2014-12-dec-10-09.the-hackett-group-understanding-e-procurement-part-1-quantifying-the-benefits-pdf.html

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2. MAKE Operations: the processes of transforming raw materials, components and parts into finished products and services;

3. DELIVER Outbound; the storage and distribution of finished goods;

4. Marketing & Sales; the identification of customer needs and the generation of sales;

5. SERVICE; the support of customers after the products and services are sold to them;

6. RETURN: the transformation of products, which are not usable anymore.

The primary activities are facilitated by support activities. Those are

I. Firm Infrastructure (general management, planning, finance, accounting, legal, government affairs, quality management, ICT)

II. Human Resource Management

III.Technology Development (R&D, Engineering, Product and Process Design))

IV. Procurement (Sourcing, Purchasing, Supplier Management)

Business Procurement in total accounts for 2 % of the Value Creation

4.1. Types of PCCSAriba’s Best Practice in eCatalogue Management14 differentiates three types of eCatalogues : CIF (Catalogue Interchange Format), Punch-out and Level 2 Punch-out.

• CIF (Catalogue Interchange Format) - hosted and maintained by the customer or eCatalogue vendor.

• PunchOut Users punch out from their procurement solution to a supplier-hosted catalogue home page, where they search, compare, and select

• Level 2 Punch-out – This has some of the best of both worlds

The Figure below shows the advantages and disadvantages of each system as follows:

14 http://exchange.ariba.com/servlet/JiveServlet/previewBody/1193-102-3-1207/Best%20Practices%20in%20eCatalog%20Management_FINAL.pdf


Figure 9: Pros and cons of eCatalogue types

The ARIBAs report also highlights the need for appropriate guidance to suppliers on the best way to use the standard fields of the catalogue template and any additional required attributes depending on the commodity area. ARIBA is using UNSPSC for commodity coding. By providing a subset of the full code to the supplier, the chance for errors is greatly reduced. In addition, suppliers should be instructed to go to at least the third and preferably the fourth level when coding items. Commodity codes can drive critical business processes such as approval flows and accounting codes and therefore accuracy is critical.

4.2. PCCS impacts on business procurementPCCS involves electronic data transfers to support operational, tactical and strategic procurement.

Public sector organisations tended to focus on e-catalogues and automating the purchasing operational process while Private sector firms took a broader, more strategic view of the potential for exploiting ‘e’. They tend to be more mature in segmenting their product / service portfolio and using appropriate ‘e’ for appropriate areas of spend.

4.2.1. Impact considerations:PCCS driven e-procurement is not a project, but rather an ongoing process of reforming and improving sourcing, purchasing and supply. A fundamental part of that is to clean up and keep accurate, consisting coding of products, services and suppliers. Supplier involvement is vital but is also the most underestimated effort in e-procurement having a general understanding of the various e-procurement applications.

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Identifying the procurement processes that are effectively supported by e-procurement. Understanding the sources of benefit of e-procurement. Identifying the risks associated with the adoption of e-procurement. Contributing to the development of e-procurement tools through identifying scope for ecommerce supported process improvement

Legal aspects:

• requirement for written procurement contracts should not be interpreted to restrict the use of any electronic means of data interchange.

• Before any electronic means of data interchange is used, it needs to be ensured that the electronic data interchange system is capable of ensuring authentication and confidentiality of the information

• Practical issues around these legal aspects need to be taken into consideration during the planning and implementation stages.

PCCS enabled E-procurement Strategy

• A comprehensive approach to e-procurement should be adopted

- analysis should enable appropriate grouping of organisations into categories requiring similar e-procurement solutions.

- The adopted solutions would have to be modular, scaleable and capable of integrating in different ways to different financial and human resource systems present in different organisations.

• Drive forward and measure intangible as well as tangible benefits of e-procurement

- most of the benefits will arise from purchasing reform, supported by e-procurement.

- reform and e-procurement will give rise to intangible benefits such as providing the capability to take a more strategic approach to procurement, and improved learning across the organisation.

• Avoid a ‘big-bang’ approach

- one size fits all solution will fail in a public sector service network. A more flexible approach is required to embrace different types and sizes of organisation, and appropriate national, regional and local purchasing decision making.

• Share best (and worst) practice experiences

- may encourage a learning platform to be developed.


Costs / Benefits / Risks:

• The cost of expenditure on goods/services related directly to the production / service delivery

• The cost of non-production of goods and services.

• The cost of operational procurement activities – requisitioning, expediting, administrative support.

• The cost of tactical procurement activities – e.g., formulating specifications, selecting suppliers, negotiating with suppliers, contracting, disposals etc.

• The costs of strategic procurement activities – e.g., spend analysis, transaction analysis, m

• analysis, planning, developing procurement policies etc.

• Internal benefits arising from investments in particular inter-organizational relationships.

• The contribution of investments in particular inter-organizational relationships to revenues.

Benefits:

• Greater transparency in procurement through electronic publishing of tender notices and contract awards

- enhance accountability and reduce the instances of corruption

• Important to assess the baseline benefits and costs associated with the process or processes to be automated

- in order to understand the probable outcomes of e-procurement adoption or enhancement.

- understand what will change and how it will change when an e-procurement tool is implemented.

Risks:

• Missing opportunities to implement strategies that improve procurement management without the need for investment in e-procurement

- many of the benefits ascribed to eProcurement may be achieved simply by improving procurement practice.

- implementation of corporate buying strategies that offer value for money, do not need electronic tools.

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• Suppliers will not cooperate with the use of e-procurement

- may not have access to affordable internet based technology

- may choose not to participate in e-reverse auctions

Some tools and applications:

• electronic systems to support traditional procurement

• EDI (electronic data interchange)

• ERP systems

• internet as a support or complement to traditional procurement

• electronic mail (e-mail)

• web enabled EDI

• extensible markup language (XML)

• world wide web (www)

• internet tools and platforms

In the Procurement Cycle:

E-informing (gathering and distributing procurement information both from and to internal and external parties from the web)

E-sourcing: (specification phase)

1. Requirement Definition

2. Sourcing

• To pre-qualify suppliers

• Identifies suppliers that can be used in the selection phase.

• UNGM is an example

E-tendering (selection phase)

3. Solicitation

4. Evaluation

• acts as a communication platform between the procuring organization and suppliers.


• It covers the complete tendering process from REOI via ITB / RFP to contracting, usually including support for the analysis and assessment activities

• does not include closing the deal with a supplier

• but facilitates a big part of tactical procurement

- It results in equal treatment of suppliers;

- transparent selection process

- reduction in (legal) errors;

- clear audit trial;

- more efficiency in the tactical procurement process

- improved time mgt of tendering

• e-tendering could be used in the formulation of long term agreements through an in-house tendering portal for goods such as vehicles and pharmaceutical drugs

E-auction & reverse auction (contract phase)

• enables deal closing if parties agree on price

• e-auctioning with upward price mechanism for selling org

• e-reverse auctioning with an onward price mechanism for buying org.

• They can be made in accordance with traditional ITB / RFP

• Internet based using open or closed systems

E-ordering & Web-based ERP (creating and approving procurement requisitions, placing Pos, receiving goods/services)

5. Contracting

6. Contract mgt

• E-ordering

- For indirect (facility) goods and services.

- By all employees of an organization.

- For ad-hoc ordering.

• Web based ERP

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15 https://www.kpmg.com/US/en/IssuesAndInsights/ArticlesPublications/Documents/the-power-of-procurement-a-global-survey-of-procurement-functions.pdf

- For direct (product related) goods and services.

- By a procurement department.

- For planned ordering.

4.3. Key findings by sectorKPMG surveyed 585 Procurement leaders across all sectors globally15. The study identified five key areas where Procurement could add more value to its organisation. One of the key areas was Leveraging systems and technology including PCCS. (The other four areas were: Partnering with the organisation; Moving beyond cost savings; Achieving the optimal operating model and prioritising supply chain risk)

Procurement functions are behind the other supply chain processes in terms of optimizing their existing systems and technology to provide greater clarity into the Management Information and Business Intelligence processes.

Regarding the differences across sectors the study found that Manufacturing, Consumer Packaged Goods and Retail have the most developed systems and technology to support Procurement functions.

From Leveraging systems and technology perspective here is the cross-sector comparison as follows:

• Financial Services (tertiary sector) performed well in spend under contract (classification driven) but face difficulties due to regularly changing regulations

• Transportation and Logistics (tertiary sector) firms show a miscellaneous picture some of them are lagging behind the others particularly in demand management and use of systems and technology.

• Public sector and Health sectors. The majority of them managing less than 60% of spend

• The Not-for-Profit sector showed a comparatively low level of maturity.

• Retailers (tertiary sector) reported some of the highest levels of maturity, particularly in their Goods For Resale (GFR) spend

• Manufacturing (secondary sector) and Consumer Packaged Goods (secondary sector) respondents returned impressive results

• Energy & Natural Resources (primary sector), Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals (secondary sector), and Infrastructure (primary sector), sectors showed very good results in the use of Systems and Technology

• Technology, Media, Telecommunications and Business Services (tertiary and quaternary sector) organisations have significant opportunities for Procurement


to bring more spend under management and rationalise their supplier base.

The following Figure demonstrates the sector maturity relating to Systems and Technology

Figure 10: Sector maturity level relating to Systems and Technology.

One key indicator of the use of systems and technology by Procurement is the level of technology enablement around Purchase-to-Pay (P2P) cycles. In a ‘best of breed’ system, P2P cycles are efficiently and fluidly integrated into the finance system, with workflow and sourcing decisions fully embedded and supported by e-Procurement tools.

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Figure 11: % of invoices paid without manual intervention (indirect spend)

On average, 18% of companies require manual intervention on at least 30% of their invoices Retail industry has more immediate benefits such as improved working capital, contract compliance, management information and cost reduction, as well as increased efficiencies in headcount.

75% of respondents have ‘established’ level of maturity in terms of their use of master data.

Figure 12: Maturity level relating to Master Data and reporting


5. European Product Classification and Catalogue Systems – EU PCCS

The correlation and/or interoperability of the Brazilian PCCS with internationally validated PCCS are required in the use of the Brazilian E-Marketplace as an effective facilitator of international B2G and B2B exchanges. This paragraph describes the role of Product Classification in Catalogues. A critical analysis compares the overall taxonomic structure of international PCCSs. Then the advantages and disadvantages of each PCCSs are assessed.

5.1. The role of Product Classification in CatalogueseProcurement is facing a couple of challenges such as:

• The lack of common business process standards and solutions make eProcurement complex and costly.

• Differing legal requirements make tendering across borders difficult for suppliers, in particular SMEs.

• Market fragmentation has resulted in technologically isolated ‘islands of eProcurement’, hampering interoperability.

Electronic catalogues (eCatalogues) and Classifications are used both in pre-award and in post-award processes. The fundamental role of classifications in eCatalogues is to improve interoperability.

At the European Union the PEPPOL16 (Pan-European Public Procurement Online) project aims to ensure this interoperability by enabling trading partners to exchange standards-based electronic documents over the PEPPOL network. PEPPOL is not an eProcurement platform but it is a collection of technical specifications that can be implemented in existing eProcurement solutions and services to make them interoperable across Europe and beyond.

The three main components of PEPPOL are

• Transport Infrastructure – the network

• Business Interoperability Specifications (BIS) – the document specifications

• Transport Infrastructure Agreements – the legal framework

PEPPOL enables both the pre-award and post-award procurement process with standardised components such as eCatalogue with Classifications

16 http://www.peppol.eu/

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17 http://www.cenbii.eu/wp-content/uploads/What-is-BII.pdf

Figure 13: Scope of PEPPOL solutions

PEPPOL defined an architecture for a full cross-border interoperability of eCatalogues, delivering and guiding the implementation of the interface components and an instance of a central service that addresses the issue of the standardisation of item property definitions.

PEPPOL is proving to any organisation (including SMEs an eCatalogue with specifications for pre and post-award cross-border procurement, based on the work carried out in the CEN BII17 workshops

BII is the acronym for Business Interoperability Interfaces for public procurement in Europe. BII standardises e-Procurement processes and documents. BII Profiles allow for interoperability at the organizational level.

Figure 14: CEN BII Deliverables


The eCatalogue building blocks are downloadable in a standalone solution or as source code and libraries, can be integrated and scalable into users’ eCommerce and eProcurement solutions are the following:

• eCatalogue Management Tool: designer for eCatalogues

• Validation: control and check over the rules (syntax, business, tender)

• Transformation: ODS2Xml, Xml2ODS, BIS2CSV

• Visualisation: style sheet for human reading, printing, saving(Html)

• Workflow: describe the choreography of the doc exchange (Post-award)

• Transport Infrastructure connector: allow the connection with PEPPOL Infrastructure(Post-award)

Business Interoperability Specifications (BIS) is a set of formal requirements for ensuring interoperability of pan-European Public eProcurement with the following scope:

• Business process as choreography of document exchange.

• Semantic models of the documents (can be mapped to different syntaxes

- Data model, actual data exchanged (reusable models with profiles)

- Business rules governing the content

5.1.1. eCatalogues and Classification in the pre-award process

Figure 15: Pre-award process-Preparing the call for tender

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Figure 16: Pre-award process – Preparation and submission of tender

Zooming in: The PEPPOL eCatalogue Architecture

Figure 17 PEPPOL eCatalogue Architecture

In PEPPOL eCatalogue a Template format is used with CPV however, this does not prevent adding codes from as many additional classification systems as wished. PEPPOL tested the use of eCl@ss. PEPPOL also developed the specifications for calling a web service, from a Property Server where the eCl@ss was used as basis. By browsing the classification hierarchical data or through the search engine the product with its identifier and name can be found and the properties and attribute of that product can be used. The predefined properties of eCl@ss - and their values,


with all the codes etc. – are in PEPPOL’s view the starting point for ‘customizing’ the item description (in PEPPOL terms, the creation on of an ‘item template’). Starting from eCl@ss properties, the users can remove, add, or create new properties for ‘customizing’ the ‘item template’, making fields mandatory or not, changing their order of presentation etc. When completed, the users “copy” the item template from the Property Server and “paste” the item code into the tool to manage eCatalogues. Then, instruct the tool to look up for all the values and import them from the Property Server. The item properties are imported, and can be managed locally

Figure 18: PEPPOL Product Property Server (PPS)

A Laptop Data Set example can be found in Annex 1

5.1.2. eCatalogues and Classification in the post-award processeCatalogues are also key components of the post-award (procurement) processes.

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5.2. eCatalogue interoperability benefitsFor economic operators:

• reduction of workload for tender participation

• wider market opportunities

• reduced transaction costs

For public administrators

• making catalogue management processes more efficient

• higher participation (->competition) to tenders

• easier solutions for eCatalogues formats

• increased integration with other eProcurement tools

5.3. A critical analysis of the overall taxonomic structure of each PCCSThe high level figures are depicted in the following table below. It is a comparison table based on the latest versions of each system as follows:

• CPV 2008

• GPC as at December 2015

• UNSPSC V 17.10001

• eCl@ss V 9.1

The table compares the ownership, objectives, main usage, coding structure, release policy, Version compatibility, change management, conditions of use and number of language versions. Below the table, the web links indicate the online access of each system.


Figure 19: Main Facts and Figures of the four classifications

[1.] www.simap.ted.europa.eu/web/simap/cpv

[2.] www.gs1.org/gpc/dec-15

[3.] www.unspsc.org/search-code

[4.] www.eclasscontent.com

The following four chapters elaborate the characteristics of the four systems

5.3.1. Common Procurement Vocabulary (CPV)18 Common Procurement Vocabulary (CPV) is a classification system used in public procurement in the European Union. It was established by Regulation (EC) No 2195/2002 of the European Parliament and of the Council on the Common Procurement Vocabulary (CPV) and amended by EC Regulation (EU) No. 213/2008 and EC Regulation (EU) No 596/2009. The latest CPV version was published in 2008.

CPV is mandatory when the contracting authorities and entities publish public procurement notices in the Official Journal of the European Union. CPV is the only 18 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=URISERV:l2200819 http://simap.ted.europa.eu/

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mandatory classification system, however other classification systems can also be used in the descriptive parts of public procurement notices or in the tender documentation. The list of CPV codes and the tables of correspondence between the CPV and other classification systems can be consulted on the Internet site: System of Information on Public Procurement (SIMAP)19

5.3.1.1. ObjectiveTo standardise the references used by contracting authorities and entities in order to

• describe the subject (products, services and works) of procurement contracts,

• increase competition efficiency

• improve the transparency of public procurement covered by Community directives.

• foster the cross-border element of procurement

• simplify the drafting of statistics on public procurement

5.3.1.2. Main UsageIt is assumed that if relevant publications can be identified more easily and across borders, this will result in more bids and increase competition between bidders.

Hence, CPV is used

• As a reference in any public procurement notice (prior information notices, calls for tender, contract award notices, etc)

• To search business opportunities in TED

• To find contract notices in the archive of TED

TED or “Tenders Electronic Daily” is the website where notices for public contracts in Europe are published.

It is the online version of the ‘Supplement to the Official Journal of the European Union’ where all tenders above a specific limit must be published.

It is important to note that CPV is included in a larger effort to simplify and modernise public procurement.

The targeted users are: contracting authorities, suppliers and their intermediaries.

20 Guide to the Common Procurement Vocabulary (CPV), European Commission, http://www.simap.europa.eu/codes-and-nomenclatures/codes-cpv/cpv_2008_guide_en.pdf


Figure 20:SIMAP website

5.3.1.3. Coding Structure20 The CPV comprises two pieces called the main vocabulary and the supplementary vocabulary.

The main vocabulary is the highest level. The supplementary vocabulary is used to give additional information on the products.

There are 9 454 codes in the main vocabulary and 903 codes in the supplementary vocabulary.

5.3.1.3.1. The main vocabularyThe main vocabulary codes are up to 9-digits long, all numerical. The ninth digit is a check digit.

• The first two digits identify the divisions (XX000000-Y);

• The first three digits identify the groups (XXX00000-Y);

• The first four digits identify the classes (XXXX0000-Y);

• The first five digits identify the categories (XXXXX000-Y);

Each of the last three digits gives a greater degree of precision within each category.

20 Guide to the Common Procurement Vocabulary (CPV), European Commission, http://www.simap.europa.eu/codes-and-nomenclatures/codes-cpv/cpv_2008_guide_en.pdf

Figure 21: CPV Main Vocabulary

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Figure 22: CPV Main Vocabulary Code Example

5.3.1.3.2. The supplementary vocabularyThe supplementary vocabulary can be used to supplement the main vocabulary in order to expand the description of the products.

The supplementary codes are five-digit long and comprise:

• A first digit (a letter) to identify the section

• A second digit (a letter) to identify the group

• The two following digits identify the attributes

• The last digit is a check digit

A code from the supplementary vocabulary can technically be used with any code from the main vocabulary.

5.3.1.4. CPV Implementation21 The entity should try to find a code that suits its needs as accurately as possible. Apparently, more than one code may be used in the standard forms for the publication of public procurement notices. However, the first one will be considered the title. The code can be further detailed, according to the specific needs of the entity, by using several codes chosen among those contained in the Supplementary Vocabulary.

Example: A procurement entity interested in buying a car with the following codes to describe its object:

34110000-1 Passenger cars

MB02-8 Right-hand-drive

CA36-8 Euro 5 (fuel)

21 http://simap.ted.europa.eu/documents/10184/36234/cpv_2008_guide_en.pdf


5.3.1.4.1. Search Search in the structure

• In the Main Vocabulary, use the headings of the divisions to narrow down the search.

• Then follow each level of the CPV structure until you find the codes

Search by keywords

• in the code descriptions, using the auto filter data option in spreadsheet

• look in codes adjacent to the ones found and repeat the search using different key words.

• In the Supplementary Vocabulary, look in the main sections identified by the letters A to Z, then look in the groups, and then look at the one directly linked to the object of the tender notice for a suitable code, whenever further details are needed.

5.3.1.5. Release policyThe provision of new versions depends on numerous factors such as political decisions or legislative activity.

It can be generally expected that the CPV is modified not less than once in every three to four years, but other factors may influence this informal term.

There is no release roadmap.

5.3.1.6. Version compatibilityCurrently there is no version compatibility policy applied. From one version to the next version, codes can be added, transferred or removed. Descriptions that are attached to the codes can be amended. The structure can also be changed.

For CPV, a numerical code that has been deleted in one of the updates can be reused. Even if we try to avoid it for two successive versions, it has already been the case in the past. As there is only one version of CPV valid at a time, any reused code should be placed in context to understand its meaning. As CPV is meant to be used for public procurement notices and procedures, each use of a code is by default linked to a specific date and time, and thus to a specific version. When moving from a version to the following one, a transition procedure is set in place to avoid conflicting use of codes.

The Commission has access to statistics on the actual use of the codes and can determine which codes are not used. Therefore, the Commission can remove those

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22 http://simap.ted.europa.eu/web/simap/cpv

codes, but only if those codes are proven to be useless or if they end up being covered by more generic descriptions or with another wording. The Commission provides mapping tables between versions.

5.3.1.7. Change management processThe Commission welcomes any feedback from the users of CPV, e.g. to add a code or to correct a wording, in any official language of the European Union. Mailboxes to which users can send comments, requests are available1 on the web. They serve as entry points to provide feedback. When needed, interest groups are consulted to provide information on a specific division.

Each new version follows the normal Community legislative process. The draft is first circulated to all interested Commission DGs. It is next circulated to the State Members through the Advisory Committee for Public Contracts or ACPC. At the next step, the draft is reviewed by the Committee of the Regions and the Economic and Social Committee and then to the European Parliament. Since so many bodies are involved in the process, there is no way to know if the codes are reviewed by external subject-matter experts. There is currently no formal review by a classification expert committee or quality control by technical bodies such as CEN.

5.3.1.8. Conditions of useCPV is available to use . Being a regulation directly applicable in all the Member States, it is available free of charge in the Official Journal of the European Union. Contracting authorities use the code that suits their procurement as accurately as possible. If the accuracy of the CPV is insufficient, then contracting authorities should refer to the division, group, class or category that better describes their intended purchase - a more general code that can be recognised because it has more zeros.

5.3.1.9. Access to CPV22 The main vocabulary, the supplementary vocabulary can be downloaded from the SIMAP website in four formats: PDF, XML, ODS and XLS. Additionally there is a CPV 2008 Guide and CPV 2008 Explanatory Notes, Correspondence tables (2003 version vs. 2008 version)

CPV comprises 9454 codes in total

• 45 Divisions

• 272 Groups

• 1,002 Classes

• 2,379 Categories

• 5,756 Sub-categories


5.3.2. GS1 Global Product Classification (GPC)The GS1 Global Product Classification (GPC) is a classification system developed, maintained and published by GS1. GS1 is a NGO dedicated to the design and implementation of global standards and solutions to improve the efficiency and visibility in supply chains. GS1 is driven by more than a million companies, who execute more than six billion transactions a day with the GS1 System of Standards. GS1 is truly global, with local Member Organisations in 111 countries, with the Global Office located in Brussels, Belgium and Princeton, New Jersey, USA.

5.3.2.1. Objectives• Facilitate the Global (Catalogue) Data Synchronisation Network - GDSN

• Provide a common language for category management to accelerate reaction to consumer needs

• Enable buyers to pre-select groups of applicable products

• Serve as a pivotal classification system between the information exchange parties

5.3.2.2. Main UsageThe top 5 industry sectors are Food Beverage and Tobacco, Beauty/Personal Care/Hygiene, Building Products, Clothing and Lawn/Garden Supplies

GPC is used in the following main applications (detailed below):

• GDSN related processes (publication, subscription, synchronisation)

• Cross-border eCommerce information improvement

Other usage examples

• New product introduction

• A global interface between business partners.

• All externally facing communication that references product categories, (Point of Sale, Product specs, Price lists, Inventory, Shipment data etc.)

• Master Data Management – Product Information Management

• Control and Uniformity across the organisation – corporate taxonomy

• Enabling Category management

• Measuring Sourcing value to support procurement

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• Strategic Sourcing

5.3.2.2.1. GPC in Global (Catalogue) Data Synchronisation Network - GDSN related processesThe main users of GPC are the GS1 Global Data Synchronisation Network (GDSN) users. The GPC Brick is a mandatory code for GDSN. The GDSN is built around the GS1 Global Registry®, GDSN-certified data pools, the GS1 Data Quality Framework and GS1 Global Product Classification, which when combined provide a powerful environment for secure and continuous synchronisation of accurate data. GDSN provides a single point of truth for product information.

Figure 23: GPC in GDSN


Cross-border information improvement23

e-Commerce information can improve product visibility across borders, improve consumer security, and deliver significant cost savings to industry, government, national regulators, and customers alike.

The US International Trade System (ITDS) conducted three business case pilots for using e-commerce data to manage product admission at international borders.

Key findings:

• The properties of meat and poultry products can be accurately determined from product classification information in industry standard electronic product catalogues.

• The use of global product classification codes in combination with barcodes (GTINs) can reduce the volume of consumer toy products to be examined by 80% or more.

23 ITDS Business Case 2011. Page 11 http://www.itds.gov/documents/pic_final.pdf

Figure 24: ITDS Cross-border eCommerce Pilots

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Figure 25: Cross-border process for Soft Toys

5.3.2.3. Coding StructureThe Key Structural Component of GPC at the lowest level is the Brick. The business rules and definitions of the GPC Brick have been designed to enable users to assign every product bought and sold to a unique GPC Brick. In the world of buying and selling products, each buying organization and selling organization typically has its own proprietary Merchandise Hierarchy and schema for buying, merchandising, and selling products. Originally, the Brick designation (and its corresponding brick attributes) was designed to allow each organization to map the Brick into their respective internal proprietary Schema. However, GS1 users have defined the need for a 4-level hierarchy to identify all products from their segment /industry In order to group the Bricks in standardized framework. Hence, GPC has evolved to become a hierarchical system since 2003.

5.3.2.3.1. GPC HierarchiesGPC is a hybrid hierarchical system such that comprises four + one level:

• Segment

• Family

• Class


• Brick

- Brick Variant

The higher levels have control or precedence over the lower levels. The GPC schema has 4 levels in its hierarchy (Segment, Family, Class and Brick) providing a coherent, logical and intuitive grouping that can be used to classify comparable products in a global environment. Each level is governed by business rules and/or principles and is intended to aid search functionality by using standard naming conventions, non- culturally biased terms and spellings and ensuring unique placement of products within the schema. Each node within the schema is designated with a Code and Description pair. The Code provides a unique reference while the Description aids human readability. Either the Code or Description can be used for searching, filtering or referencing.

The lowest level in the hierarchy, Brick, has a level beneath it called Brick Attribute to which Brick Attribute Values are allocated). Brick Attributes or Values are not included in the hierarchy, as they cannot be aggregated to higher levels. Brick Attributes are only relevant to the Brick they are assigned to. Brick Attribute Values are only relevant to the Brick Attribute they are assigned to.

Legend: S = Segment, F = Family, C = Class, B = Brick, BA = Brick Attribute, BAV = Brick Attribute Value

Segment: The first and highest level of the GPC hierarchy is a logical grouping of Families sharing similar characteristics. The Families contained in a Segment are logical and coherent aggregations.

Family: The second level of the GPC hierarchy is a logical grouping of Classes sharing similar characteristics. The Classes contained in a Family are logical and coherent aggregations.

Class: The third level of the GPC hierarchy is a logical grouping of Bricks sharing similar characteristics. The Bricks contained in a Class are logical and coherent aggregations.

Brick: The fourth, lowest and most detailed level of the hierarchy is a logical grouping of similar products that conform to the Brick business rules. A Brick code is a classification key and will contain a group of products that serve a common purpose. They are processed to similar methods, are used and applied in a similar manner, are of a similar form and material and as far as practical contain products that can be characterised by the same set of Brick Attributes relevant to the product. Very

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specific groupings of products can thus be identified by the combination of a Brick and a collection of Brick Attributes with specific Brick Attribute Values. There are no specific rules in GPC for segment and family naming, only uniqueness rules that apply for Brick names. Brick names are always plural.

Brick Attributes represent particular category features of the products assigned to the same Brick. Brick Attributes may be assigned to more than one Brick. (ISO 13584 requests to use the word Property instead of Attribute)

Brick Attribute Value: Each Brick Attribute will have a set of unique, objective and mutually exclusive Brick Attribute Values associated with it.

5.3.2.4. ImplementationClassification with GPC is the act of saying (see figure below):

• A certain product (identified with GTIN) uniquely belongs to a particular category (Brick)

- i.e. there is no multiple classification in GPC

• This Brick is part of the upper level hierarchical elements (->Class->Family->Segment)

• This Brick can be further characterised by several Brick Variants (Brick Attribute - Brick Attribute Value pairs).

• The Brick: 10000025 Milk and milk substitute (perishable) represents: 4 * 6 * 3*3*3*13 = 2808 Brick Variants

• 1 of the 2808 Brick Variants could be characterized as follows:

- Animal milk, Low fat, Organic, Probiotic, Must be refrigerated, Sheep milk.


Figure 26: GPC Classification Example

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5.3.2.5. Release policySince GPC is the mandatory classification standard for Global Data Synchronisation Network (GDSN) the GPC two publication releases are aligned with the GDSN Maintenance Releases and facilitate two audiences.

• GDSN Data Pools - GPC Specific (Data Pool) Files

- a set of files to be used specifically by GPC to facilitate Data Pool integration

• Other Trading Partners (beyond GDSN)

- GPC Standards– a series of documents, spreadsheets, and XML files. These files are bundled as individual .zip files and organized in the GS1 Knowledge Centre by Segment

- GPC Browser – A GPC Specific Web-based database that allows for web browsing the GPC hierarchy.

GPC uses a Consolidated Release strategy to publish the GPC Schema twice per year, one in June and one in December

Figure 27: GPC June Publication

Figure 28: GPC December Publication


5.3.2.6. Version compatibilityDelta reports between two consecutive releases are available for all updates. Companies can use several versions, however to achieve master data synchronisation the GDSN users should migrate to the GDSN version practically 1 / 2 times a year.

5.3.2.7. Change Management ProcessThere are two Change Management Processes

• GPC Maintenance Work Orders - by the GPC Standard Management Group (SMG)

• GPC Development Work Orders- by a GPC Mission-Specific Working Group (MSWG)

Figure 29: GPC Change Management Processes

5.3.2.8. Conditions of useThe GPC standard is downloadable to all companies without usage restrictions. Beyond downloading of the files, there is a GPC Browser24 available in 15 languages (Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese, Dutch, German, English, Finnish, French, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian and Swedish). Segment, Family, Class, Brick and Attribute).

24 http://www.gs1.org/1/productssolutions/gdsn/gpc/browser/25 http://www.gs1.org/gpc/dec-15

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26 The same Brick attributes (and values) are used at multiple bricks simultaneously27 https://www.unspsc.org/Public/UNSPSC

5.3.2.9. AccessThe latest release was published in December 201525.

The file formats are as follows:

• The schema in xml, txt and xlsx

• Info sheets in docx

• Visual map in xlsx

• Delta report in xml and xlsm.

GPC comprises:

• 37 Segments

• 115 Families

• 788 Classes

• 3,800 Bricks

• 7,697 Brick Attributes26 (2,455 unique Brick Attributes, some of them are used more than once)

• 148,228 Brick Attribute Values ( 11,459 unique Brick Attribute Values, some of them are used more than once)

I.e. in practical terms, 3,800 Bricks are characterised further by 7,697 Brick Attributes and 148,228 Brick Attribute Values. It means that if as an average there are 2 Brick Attributes per Brick and each Brick Attribute has 19 Brick Attribute Values then in the total GPC schema there are 3,800*19*19=1,371,800 Brick variants without introducing a new hierarchical level below the lowest tier called Brick

5.3.3. UNSPSC27 The United Nations Standard Products and Services Code® (UNSPSC®) was jointly developed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Dun & Bradstreet Corporation (D & B) in 1998.

It has been managed by GS1 US™ - as a code manager for UNDP (who owns all rights) the since 2003. UNDP addresses all legal issues and will take appropriate legal action to protect its interests in the UNSPSC. As Code Manager, GS1 US is charged with managing code maintenance, designated projects, appropriate communications with members, the user community, and other duties as assigned. The UNDP has taken an active role in developing criteria and. The UNDP is also actively participating in outreach and communications to members and other organizations who share an


interest in the UNSPSC. The Membership and user communities of UNSPSC provide vital information to the management team to guide on strategy, policies, processes and other areas as needed.

UNSPSC is a hierarchical convention that is used to classify all products and services with a common coding scheme. It is an open standard

• publicly available specifications for solving a certain problem

• not proprietary

• participation in development is open and transparent

• decisions are made on a consensus basis

• no discrimination or favour

5.3.3.1. ObjectivesThe intended purpose is to enable e-commerce between sellers and buyers and provide the foundation for spend analysis by

• Enabling sourcing and procuring

• Discovering a product or service - a common naming convention allows ICT systems to automatically list similar products under a single category.

• Facilitating expenditure analysis - when every purchase transaction of an enterprise is tagged with a common set of product identifiers, purchasing managers are able to analyze enterprise expenditures.

• Controlling and establishing uniformity and visibility across the company - codes bring a single, uniform view of all expenditures in a company. It ties together all departments and divisions, including business functions such as purchasing and settlement.

5.3.3.2. Main UsageUNPSC could be used as a(n)

• Analysis tool for analyzing spend, sales or market share

• Organizing tool for creating catalogues, dictionaries and schemas

• Master framework for eCommerce content management within and between companies

• Searching tool for finding products and services

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28 www.ungm.org29 https://transition.ungm.org/Publications/UserManuals/Suppliers/UNSPSC%20Codes%20Guide%20-%20Suppliers.pdf

• Communications tool for automating procurement

• Standardizing tool for ensuring consistent naming and coding conventions

• Bridge and central intersection connecting players in the global marketplace

UNSPSC is not a

• product dictionary or catalogue

• total content management solution

• replacement for materials and procurement or supplier catalogues

• source for uniquely identifying products and services

5.3.3.2.1. Spend analysisOne of the most important foundational shifts in spend analysis technology in the past few years has been an interest in greater flexibility and visibility into the classification process. Increasingly, more advanced organizations are starting to look for the ability to classify spend to one or more taxonomies at the same time (e.g., customized UNSPSC and ERP materials code) as well as having the ability to reclassify spend to analyze differ views and cuts of the data based on functional roles and objectives. The UNSPSC implementation enables the automation of gathering and analysing of spend data by providing a uniform, enterprise-wide transparent view of spend and avoid maverick spend by reducing off-contract spend at higher prices. The roll-up (in the hierarchy up to Segment level) analysis identifies contractible groups, opportunities for strategic supplier relationships and cooperation It facilitates also the procurement process centralize in order to leverage volume for better pricing deals. The implementation also helps collaborate with customers or suppliers through use of a common classification system. UNSPSC can also facilitate the inventory reduction through product standardization

5.3.3.2.2. United Nations Global Marketplace (UNGM28) introduced UNSPSC as of November 201229 UNGM is the common UN supplier database. UN Procurement Officers use the UNSPSC codes as search criteria for finding potential suppliers registered and accepted by one or more UN agency from the UNGM database. UNSPSC codes are crucial to subscribe to UN’s Tender Alert Service. UNGM uses a sub-set of 3,500 codes of the more than 50,000 UNSPSC codes available. The codes used in UNGM have been compiled using information from the respective UN organizations and should be representative of what organizations buy.


5.3.3.2.3. Office of Small and Medium Enterprises (OSME) of Public Works and Government Services Canada will migrate to UNSPSC codes in 201730 OSME supports SMEs by working to reduce barriers and by simplifying requirements for SMEs that want to do business via tender opportunities with the Government of Canada. Currently in Canada the Goods and Services Identification Numbers (GSIN) is used for tendering support.

The main reasons for migrating from GSIN to UNSPSC are the following:

• UNSPSC hosts most of the new commodity types in a strict classification structure with neutral non-proprietary codes

• UNSPSC is code-managed by GS1 US resulting in one authoritative classification system that can be used and shared internationally.

5.3.3.2.4. UNSPSC Usage Roadmap 2015-1631 UNSPSC is intended to be embedded in International Trade Data System (ITDS) as of early 2016. This way UNSPSC could become a dominant product and service code set in use around the world, and the code set where commercial and governmental interests come together. Once complete, UNSPSC will serve not only for spend analysis and supply chain engineering but also an expanded role in making the global trade lanes visible.

The largest area of work is healthcare related. UNSPSC will be working on five segments

• Segment 51 Drugs and Pharmaceutical Products

• Segment 42 Medical Equipment and Accessories and Supplies

• Segment 41 Laboratory and Measuring and Observing and Testing Equipment

• Segment 12 Chemicals including Bio Chemicals and Gas Materials

• Segment 85 Healthcare Services

5.3.3.2.5. UNSPSC in GS1 Global (Catalogue) Data Synchronization Network (GDSN)32 Manufacturers or sources of a product can share product information using various sharing tools in different Product Catalogue formats such as the one applied by Global Data Synchronization (GDSN).

Sharing tools can contain various pieces of information about the product such as

30 http://entreprisescanada.ca/eng/blog/entry/5174/31 https://www.unspsc.org/Portals/3/Documents/UNSPSC%20road%20map%202015-2016.pdf

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• Product specification sheets, marketing documents, or printed product catalogues/order sheets

• Flat file (.csv, .txt, .xlsx, etc.)

• Web portal or graphic user interface (GUI), online tool

• eCommerce messages (ANSI X12, EDI, eCom, etc.)

All of the methods highlighted above can share UNSPSC Codes too.

In GDSN, v3.1 UNSPSC code is provided in the following way:Table 1: UNSPSC in GDSN

32https://www.unspsc.org/Portals/3/Documents/User%20Guides/UNSPSC%20Training-%20Population%20of%20UNSPSC%20in%20GDSN-%20v1.pdf

5.3.3.3. Coding StructureThe UNSPSC is a hierarchical code set with 4 Levels Segments, Families, Classes and Commodities. All UNSPSC nodes are identified with an 8-digit structured numeric code. An additional optional 2-digit suffix (Rental or Lease, Maintenance or Repair, Manufacturer, Wholesale, Retail, Recycle, Installation) indicates the business function identifier in support of the commodity

XX Segment

The logical aggregation of families for analytical purposes

XX Family

A commonly recognized group of inter-related commodity categories

XX Class

A group of commodities sharing common characteristics

XX Commodity

A group of substitutable products or services


Figure 30: UNSPSC Commodity example

The hierarchical tree structure enables ‘drill down’ (e.g.: focus on the categories that represent the most spend) and ‘roll up’ (e.g.: identify contractible groups, reduce the number of suppliers) analysis. The list of 56 Segments appears in the Figure below

Figure 31: 55 UNSPSC Segments

5.3.3.4. ImplementationThe focus of the implementation effort is to integrate UNSPSC into ERP or master data systems and trading documents. The implementation steps involve critical areas such as establishing executive support, determining implementation strategy, forming cross-functional teams, creating internal and external communication strategies, initiating supplier involvement, and establishing standard operating procedures.

33 Adapted from a UNSPSC implementation tool kit.https://www.unspsc.org/Portals/3/Documents/UNSPSC%20Tool%20Kit%20from%20GS1%20Healthcare%20USR1.0.pdf

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34 https://www.unspsc.org/search-code

Main stages of implementation33

• Establish executive support to obtain executive approval to proceed with implementation.

• Set up a multi-disciplinary group including members outside of supply chain functions that promotes buy-in and enables communication efforts

• Set up a UNSPSC operational team

• Develop and initiate project communication with tools such as newsletters, intranet, websites and supplier letters to introduce the concept of the UNSPSC

• Train the advisory group and the operational team

• Set up a utilisation and implementation strategy

• Evaluate ICT systems and make necessary changes if needed

• Assign a UNSPSC code to each product purchased and establish data storage referencing UNSPSC in the necessary product master files

Table 2: Example - UNSPSC Code assignment to each item

• Engage strategic suppliers and customers

• Conduct testing

• Make Adjustments to Initial UNSPSC Implementation Plan

• Create Standard Operating Procedures

5.3.3.4.1. Search supportTwo types of Search are supported in the UNSPSC website34: ‘Search Code’ and ‘Search Title’. In the ‘Search Title’ box, even a partial description could be used with a % as a wild card.


Figure 32: UNSPSC Search support

5.3.3.5. Release policyThe UNSPSC is updated and released at least once a year, but typically twice per year. The version is released in PDF for the public and in Excel format for members. The excel version also includes an audit trail that documents changes in the version released. A new version becomes usable when it is released. The versions live on and people can continue on a version as their need dictate or update to a newer version when warranted.

5.3.3.6. Version compatibilityAs the components of the UNSPSC are standardized, backward compatibility is always guaranteed. Forward compatibility is guaranteed for the portions of the release that centre on codes added. On codes that are modified, edited or deleted a remapping process is required if a member wishes to upgrade to that version. The audit trail provided in the excel format of each release includes version parameters as to when an entry was originally added when it was last changed and or when it was deleted.

5.3.3.7. Change management processIndividual request can be made by members and occasionally groups of members require that major rework in a segment must be done to sustain industry consensus. These projects are called Segment reviews and are accomplished by making all of the members interested in the segment aware of the review. The members have the ability to participate.

Once consensus is reached, the candidate requests are prepared for vote by the membership. Generally the interested group of members approach UNSPSC and

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35 UNSPSC Newsletter https://www.unspsc.org/Portals/3/Documents/UNSPSC%20Newsletter%20February%202015.pdf36 http://wiki.eclass.eu/wiki/FAQ

then participation is offered to all members who vote in that segment and go from there.

Those requests that pass the vote are collected for a back end review. The back end checks that the work in addition, the initial review was done correctly and often surfaces questions of interpretation. There is a 3 node (approval, vote, and review by a third party) system to try and insure maximal quality by a different ontologist then all codes that have been approved in vote and have been approved by the back end ontologist are collected and included in the new version of the code set. Members make requests through the website, the above detailed process is all accomplished through a secure application within the website it is called Cat Master.

5.3.3.8. Conditions of useThe UNSPSC is an open domain and royalty free code set. There is a USD 100 charge for downloading the code set in excel. PDF format is free and downloadable to all companies without usage restrictions. It is available in 10 languages (Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish) There is also a free code or keyword search available.

5.3.3.9. AccessThe latest release is Version 17.1001 (as of March 2015)35

UNSPSC comprises > 77,000 codes

• +25,000 codes)

• Almost all (95%) are commodity level changes

• Almost all (94%) are for goods codes

• The bulk of these changes are updates to Segment 51- Drugs and Pharmaceutical Products, Segment 50- Food Beverage and Tobacco Products, and the newly created Segment 64- Financial Services.

5.3.4. eCl@ss36

eCl@ss is an international ISO/IEC compliant cross-industry horizontal standard for classification and product description. eCl@ss’s scope covers most of the products, direct or indirect materials and services. For material groups there are sets of properties. It is supported internationally with regional partners in Europe, the USA and Asia. Manufacturers and suppliers can reach their customers on their own language with proper translations. Buyers can identify, categorise and order all products and services needed with the eCl@ss codes using product databases, merchandise information systems or electronic catalogues.


5.3.4.1. ObjectivesTo provide a standardized classification system which could not only be used to perform statistical evaluations, but also to search, find and describe products with properties in a systematic standardised (ISO 13584, IEC 61360 and DIN 4002) way.

5.3.4.2. Main Usage37 eCl@ss is designed to be implemented across the end-to-end supply from development to disposal

Typical usage areas:

• Procurement (public)

• Catalogue data exchange

• eCl@ss and its importance for industry 4.0

• Master data management for procurement, production, sales and distribution processes

• Category management in a standardised category structure

• Engineering - process integration into electronic planning processes, transfer of E-CAD planning data from the manufacturer to the customer.

• Product data for eProcurement and PIM systems

• Marketplaces

• In-house data model

5.3.4.2.1. Procurement (public)With the help of eCl@ss, buying organisations can use their tender-based framework contracts with their suppliers with the following requirements:

• Product attributes from eCl@ss

• Description details of catalogue products and services with eCl@ss templates38

An eCl@ss template is a bilaterally agreed data specification. It defines which data from the dictionary shall occur in transactional data (messages) or catalogues s and how this data is expected to be presented.

The data dictionary defines how products and services are classified and can be described. The template is used to structure the catalogue with filling instructions.

37 http://wiki.eclass.eu/wiki/Use_cases38 hhttp://wiki.eclass.eu/wiki/Templates

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5.3.4.2.2. Catalogue data exchange BME is a German Association of Materials Management, Purchasing and Logistics for most of the industrial and service sectors, including distributive trade, banking, insurance and public institutions. BMEcat provides a basis for a simple adoption of catalogue data from many different formats.

The BMEcat39 format contains both product information and planning information. It is an XML-based freely available standard for the exchange of electronic product catalogues. BMEcat can display eCl@ss in full by describing the classified products. eCl@ss offers the BMEcat 2005.1-advanced (backward compatible with

5.3.4.3. Coding structureeCl@ss is a 4-level classification model with product properties. The top level is called a “segment”, the second is a “main group”, the third is a “group” and the fourth level is a “commodity class”. The sets of properties are allocated to the fourth level (commodity class). The eCl@ss data model is designed in such a way that products and services are classified at the commodity group level (level 4) as only these classes can be described with the help of properties. eCl@ss does not define mandatory properties - the use of individual properties of an eCl@ss set of properties depends on the product specifications to be described and the processes in which the sets of properties are to be used.

39 http://www.bme.de/en/start/

Figure 33: eCl@ss structure

By introducing eCl@ss Advanced Representations (since eCl@ss 7.0), the eCl@ss offers an ISO13584-32:2010 (ontoML) compliant data structure.

The data structure contains the structural elements. The 4-tier class structure is associated with the new application class (AC). This, in turn, contains all relevant structural elements such as blocks and aspects.


Figure 34: eCl@ss classification data structure

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Figure 35: eCl@ss structure example

5.3.4.4 Release policyeCl@ss has defined a transparent release roadmap. Major Releases are valid for a longer time than Minor Releases. Structural changes result in a higher upgrade effort for users.

• Major Release includes all possible modifications of existing structural elements (including structural modifications) and the addition of new structural elements, as well as modifications of the relations between existing structural elements

• Minor Release includes the modification of certain attributes of existing structural elements (e.g. textual changes) and the addition of new structural elements, and new relations between new and/or existing structural elements.


eCl@ss publishes

• one release per year

• with a fixed publication date on the 30th November each year (or the first working day in December)

• Every year one Minor Release will be published, every second year the decision on demand will be taken whether the Minor Release will be replaced by a Major Release depending on the number and type of submitted change requests (the more structural changes are submitted, the higher the demand for a Major Release)

5.3.4.5. Version compatibilityMajor releases are not downwards-compatible to previous releases due to possible structural changes. Minor releases are downwards-compatible within the same Major Release number. Service packs are downwards and upwards-compatible to the previous Minor Release as well as to every Minor Release within the same Major Release number (e.g. all 9.x releases with each other) as they comprise only textual changes

5.3.4.6. Change management processeCl@ss maintains a standard-based workflow. Change requests are checked initially for formal completeness and correctness, then reviewed and refined respectively in the expert groups by product experts and finally checked by quality management for correctness with regards to form and content, within the overall eCl@ss context. A four-eye principle is applied. The workflow: Lean, transparent and effective. Any interested party can submit change requests free of charge using the eCl@ss Content Development Platform. The application of new classes and properties is, as well as changes to the existing content, possible.

In general there are two procedures possible:

• only classification update (without property description)

• classification and property description update (including product properties, that are based on eCl@ss)

eCl@ss provides four supporting files to accomplish this goal.

• CUF (Classification Update File)

• RUF (Release Update File)

• SDF (Structure Difference File)

• TUF (Transaction Update File)

40 http://wiki.eclass.eu/wiki/Category:IT_Service_Providers

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5.3.4.7. ImplementationThe introduction of eCl@ss requires experience. eCl@ss association has set up a network of authorized “eCl@ss service providers40. All service providers assigned with implementing tasks defined by the eCl@ss association, guarantee to observe the current rules, guidelines and requirements of the eCl@ss e.V. regarding the eCl@ss-data model based on international standards.

Typical implementation examples:

• use eCl@ss with the BMEcat

• use eCl@ss with GS1XML

5.3.4.8. Conditions of use41 The eCl@ss standard may only be obtained directly from eCl@ss, through downloading, via the eCl@ss download portal (www.eclassdownload.com) or from third parties authorized by eCl@ss e.V. The use of eCl@ss is under the condition of a license and requires that the user has registered or logged in properly through the electronic registration form on the Download Portal. For the procurement and use of the eCl@ss standard license fees will be charged. Each license fee is due on acquisition.

Besides complete translations in English and German, part-translations in French, Turkish, Chinese, Spanish, Czech, Portuguese and other42 languages are available.

Language version is not or not fully made available by eCl@ss, however the BASIC version is freely available in English, German and French on the website43.

5.3.4.9. AccessThe latest release is Version 9.1 (01 December 2015). It is available in Basic Version and in Advanced Version BASIC is a subset of ADVANCED and contains only the content that could be represented in a .csv format. The ADVANCED version is built on the basis of the data model ISO13584. It contains all structural elements of the eCl@ss classification system including property blocks, dynamic elements such as reference properties, polymorphism and cardinality blocks.

In the following formats:

• eCl@ss 9.1 BASIC (CSV),

• eCl@ss 9.1 BASIC (XML),

• eCl@ss 9.1 ADVANCED (XML 2.0).

eCl@ss v 9.1 comprises:

• 33 Segments

• 41,027 Classes (all level)

• 16,973 Properties

• 14,456 Values

41 https://www.eclassdownload.com/catalog/conditions.php42 http://www.eclassdownload.com/catalog/eclass_releases.php/language/en43 http://www.eclasscontent.com/index.php?id=90000000&version=9_1&language=en


5.4. Advantages and disadvantages of each PCCS

5.4.1. General functioning

5.4.1.1. CPV• Advantages:

- Important in publishing and identifying multilingual tender notices. Both buyers and bidders regard the CPV as generally useful. Contracting authorities use the CPV when publishing tender notices.

• Disadvantages:

- Multiple classification is confusing

- Some interactive tools such as a wiki, web-seminars, feedback mechanisms or online-forums are missing.

- A test with a sample of 405 tender notices showed that the code was inaccurate in about 23% of the notices.

- Incorrect use is highest for works, where 28% does not match the distinctions used in the construction industry.

- Several codes for works are not mutually exclusive, but overlap.

5.4.1.2. GPC• Advantages:

- Mutually exclusive classification is supported

- Facilitates catalogue data synchronisation processes

• Disadvantages:

- Narrower scope is a stumbling block of wider implementation

5.4.1.3. UNSPSC• Advantages:

- Well known spend analysis system used globally

• Disadvantages:


- Some consistency issue and most of the commodities are without definitions

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5.4.1.4. eCl@ss• Advantages:

- Most of the segments represented by eCl@ss are widely covered with a massive amount of potential commodity classes

• Disadvantages:


5.4.2. Search


- Basic search when bidders use more often keywords rather than codes

• Disadvantages:

- Not user friendly. Awareness issue too.

- Missing additional functionalities, i.e. easier navigation, offering suggestions while typing and a more comprehensive presentation of the structure of the CPV and single codes


- GPC Browser is user friendly

- Definitions are clear and easy to use

• Disadvantages:

- Awareness problems regarding the role of brick attributes and values


- Basic code or keyword search serves the very basic need

• Disadvantages:

- Lack of definitions and properties can cause data quality problems



- Detailed standardised properties, wikis and other tools facilitate user friendly search

• Disadvantages:

- Minor data consistency issues

5.4.3. Level of details (number of codes)The number of codes of each PCCS (February 2016) versus the codes in 2012 at cMap project:

Table 3: PCCS codes - Status in February 2016 Table 4: PCCS Codes – in 2012 (cMap project)

Latest Version Notes:

• CPV Version 200844

• GPC45 “As at December 2015”

- Below the 4th level there are 7,697 Brick Attributes with 148,228 Brick Attribute Values represent over 1.3 million Brick Variants

- The same Brick Attributes (and Brick Attribute Values) are used at multiple bricks simultaneously

• UNSPSC46 Version 17.1001

- The hierarchical figures are estimates - UNSPSC claims that there are over 50,000 commodity codes

• eCl@ss47 Version 9.1

- The hierarchical figures are estimates too- eCl@ss claims that there are 41,027 codes (as an all level total)

- 16,973 Properties and 14,456 Values are also published

44 www.simap.ted.europa.eu/web/simap/cpv45 www.gs1.org/gpc/dec-15

46 www.unspsc.org/search-code47 www.eclasscontent.com

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The next paragraphs in this chapter are summarising the advantages and disadvantages regarding ‘Level of details’


- Buyers and sellers can choose the level of detail at which they want to use the system

- It is possible to describe works / supplies / services in considerable detail

• Disadvantages:

- Level of detail provided is not fully used in practice and probably not necessary - the number of CPV codes could even be reduced

- Supplementary vocabulary was used in only 1.5% of the notices


- Brick attribute and Brick attribute values give extra level of granularity (over 1.3 million in total) without introducing another hierarchical level

• Disadvantages:

- Brick attribute and Brick attribute values are not implemented at some organisations just the Bricks


- UNSPSC has the broadest level of segment details including not only products but also services

• Disadvantages:

- The distribution of included classes is very wide. Uneven level of details makes a cross-reference more difficult

5.4.3.4 eCl@ss• Advantages:

- The details are supported with standardised properties, however many segments are still missing


• Disadvantages:

- Services are not very consistent

5.4.4. Coverage and completenessBased upon the Quantitative comparison of cMap results (Appendix 1)

Table 4: cMap Quantitative comparison of PCCSs

• CPV Comparison to GPC:

- In 13% of the cases, min. 1 category in GPC and no class available in the CPV.

- Vice versa, in 35% of the cases, there is min 1 category in the CPV and no class is available in GPC.

• CPV Comparison to UNSPSC:

- In 33% of the cases, min. 1 category in the UNSPSC and no class is available in the CPV. Neither eCl@ss with 35% nor GPC with 37% does better in the direct comparison with the UNSPSC.

- Vice versa, in 28% of the cases, there is at least 1 category in the CPV and no class is available in the UNSPSC.

• CPV Comparison to eCl@ss:

- In 23% of the cases min. 1 category in eCl@ss for which there is no class available in the CPV.

- Vice versa, in 34% of the cases, there is at least one category in the CPV and no class is available in eCl@ss.

Similar logic could be followed for the other 3 PCCSs than that of the one described from CPV’s perspective based on the table above.

The next paragraphs in this chapter are summarising the advantages and disadvantages regarding coverage and completeness

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- Generally complete with 9454 codes in total. There are no broad types of works/supplies/services, which are missing in the CPV.

• Disadvantages:

- Coverage is sometimes too specific, while in other cases too general. Some codes do not correspond to current market demands.

- Divisions missing from CPV (Based upon the Qualitative comparison of CWA 1613828)

• Present in GPC:

- 10 Pet Care/Food

- 80 Tools/Equipment – Hand

- 82 Tools/Equipment – Power

- 84 Tool Storage/Workshop Aids

• Present in UNSPSC:

- 24 Material Handling and Conditioning and Storage Machinery and their Accessories and Supplies

- 26 Power Generation and Distribution Machinery and Accessories

- 27 Tools and General Machinery

- 32 Electronic Components and Supplies

- 94 Organisations and Clubs (without supplies, services or works)

• Present in eCl@ss:

- 20000000 Packing material

- 21000000 Manufacturing facilities, workshop equipment, tool

- 33000000 Installation (complete)

- 35000000Semi-finishedproducts,materials

- 41000000 Marketing



- It serves the needs of their user communities in 111 countries with appropriate granularity

• Disadvantages:

- Covers only 37 domains, most of the services are missing


- Most of the products and services are covered

• Disadvantages:

- Not granular enough for some industries such as retail


- Distribution of classes is rather equal, i.e. the covered segments all have a rather big amount of classes,

• Disadvantages:

- Some domains and services are not covered

5.4.5. Cross-border procurement support


- Enables more competition which leads to better value for money in public procurement

- CPV is used in equal measure to identify cross-border procurement opportunities and domestic opportunities.

- CPV allows an automated translation as a multilingual tool (23 languages) - no longer necessary to perform text searches in different languages

• Disadvantages:

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- Bidders may prefer additional search techniques over the CPV for various reasons


- GPC is available for the buyers (mainly retailers) in 111 countries

• Disadvantages:

- Somewhat limited domain scope makes it difficult to outreach to new industries


- Strongly supports cross-border procurement globally

• Disadvantages:

- In some industries cross-border procurement may require more granularity


- Procurement organisations can easily use tender-based framework contracts with their suppliers across borders. Procurement operators draw up specifications based on eCl@ss in respect of products to be purchased and submit these to their suppliers so they can put in a bid.

• Disadvantages:

- Geographical coverage is still not global

5.4.6. Below threshold procurement support


- In the survey 36% stated that they had used CPV below EU thresholds as well

• Disadvantages:

- Lack of awareness in some cases



- In principle GPC could be applied for below threshold procurement

• Disadvantages:

- GPC is not used for this purpose


- UNSPSC supports this functionality

• Disadvantages:

- Not known


- Technically supported functionality

• Disadvantages:

- Unknown

6. PCCS Information (Semantic) Interoperability48

It is worth noting that the European Commission has revised the Interoperability layers and as a result

Semantic Interoperability layer has been renamed into Information Interoperability layer in order to avoid misunderstandings.

Information Interoperability means: Format, quality and meaning of exchanged information are understood by all parties.

The IEEE Computer Society defines interoperability49 as the “Ability of a system or a product to work with other systems or products without special effort on the part of the customer. Interoperability is made possible by the implementation of standards.”

In the European Commission’s ISA context50 interoperability means the facilitation of cross-border and cross-sector information exchange, taking into account legal,

48 http://ec.europa.eu/isa/documents/presentations/eif-revision-stephen-quest.pdf49 https://www.ieee.org/education_careers/education/standards/standards_glossary.html

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organisational, semantic and technical aspects. Public administrations are expected to provide efficient public services to businesses and citizens across Europe. ISA, the programme on Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations, addresses this need. ISA supports and facilitates efficient and effective cross-border electronic collaboration between European public administrations. The programme enables the delivery of electronic public services and ensures the availability, interoperability, re-uses and sharing of common solutions

Semantic Interoperability is the approach of ensuring that each PCCS system can understand the information received from the others. It must ensure that the precise meaning of information can be used and interpreted without ambiguity. Critical to this is the need for aligning both data models, terminology, maintenance and releases.

6.1. Semantic Interoperability and ontologySemantic interoperability is building with not only the packaging of data (syntax), but also the simultaneous transmission of the meaning with the data (semantics). This is organised by adding data about the data (metadata), linking each data element to a controlled, shared vocabulary. The meaning of the data is transmitted with the data itself in one information package that is independent of any information systems. This shared vocabulary, and its associated links it to an ontology51, which provides the foundation and capability of machine interpretation, inference, and logic.

Syntactic interoperability is a prerequisite function of the semantic interoperability. It involves a common data format and common protocol to structure any data so that the manner of processing the information will be interpretable from the structure. It also allows detection of syntactic errors, thus allowing receiving systems to request resending of any message that appears to be garbled or incomplete.

A single ontology containing representations of every term used in every application is generally not feasible, because of the rapid creation of new terms or assignments of new meanings to old terms. However, there is the possibility of finding some finite set of basic concept representations that can be combined to create any of the more specific concepts that users may need for any given set of applications or ontologies.

An ontology is a formal naming and definition of the types, properties, and interrelationships of the entities that really or fundamentally exist for a particular domain of discourse. It is thus a practical application of philosophical ontology, with a taxonomy. In practical terms an ontology is a working map to the data landscape, providing context to the developers, designers, and business users on how the data fits in to the business.

The foundation ontology is called upper ontology that contains all those basic elements would provide a sound basis for general semantic interoperability, and allow users to define any new terms they need by using the basic inventory of ontology elements, and still have those newly defined terms properly interpreted by any other computer system that can interpret the basic foundation ontology.

50 http://ec.europa.eu/isa/faq/faq_en.htm51 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_%28information_science%29


The upper ontology, which is suitable to support accurate, and general semantic interoperability can evolve after some initial foundation ontology has been tested and used by a wide variety of users. A global standard stable foundation ontology is still yet to come. The use of ontologies in supporting semantic interoperability is to provide a fixed set of concepts whose meanings and relations are stable and can be accepted by the users. The task of determining which terms in which contexts (each database is a different context) then is separated from the task of creating the ontology, and must be taken up by the designer of a database, or the designer of a form for data entry, or the developer of a program for language understanding. When a word used in some interoperability context changes its meaning, then to preserve interoperability it is necessary to change the pointer to the ontology element(s) that specifies the meaning of that word. In order to turn data to information, a classification is needed to make it usable by the business. This means, in order to get value from, for example a NoSQL stores, it is necessary to build some sort of canonical model or ontology – so that the requirements (business process expectations) for turning data into information through business rule processing. It’s not enough to simply have a NoSQL environment, and continue to throw data in a Big Data environment at it as it comes (while helpful for audit purposes, it has zero business value until you can classify the data inside).

6.2. Ontology for E-CommerceA big issue in e-Commerce applications based on Semantic Web technology is the lack of global standard ontologies for products and services. Several studies highlighted the importance of ontologies in e-business scenarios.

Obrst52 et al described the main challenges associated with mapping among e-business ontologies such as the problem of mapping reference ontologies with well-defined semantics to other ontologies, taxonomies, and standards-based classification systems that are less semantically sound and coherent. This research outlined three mappings between an application and an ontology:

• Mapping table (in a database) in which each line of the table indicates an association between some application data structure and the ontology. This table could support many-to-many mappings by duplicating either an application structure or an ontology node in some rows. Completeness can be easily determined by ensuring that each application structure in the table is mapped to at least one ontology node.

• Model of application (a mapping relation is introduced that defines the association between an ontology node and nodes in the application model.)

• Application mapped within the ontology (an application-specific mapping relation relates nodes in the ontology to their use in an application.)

A complete analysis of these approaches is beyond the scope of this report. Unfortunately, it turned out that there was no single approach fully met all the business

52 Obrst, Wray, Liu: Ontological engineering for B2B E-commerce. (2001) http://people.scs.carleton.ca/~armyunis/knowledge-managment/papers/Ontological%20Engineering%20for%20B2B%20E-commerce.pdf

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requirements. It seems that there is a lack of serious ontology engineering efforts in the products and services domain that go beyond academic prototypes.

Private PCCS (such as CPV, GPC, UNSPSC and eCl@ss) could be considered very important basis for ontology engineering, because they include a large number of consensual concept definitions plus a hierarchy. The interpretation and consequent representation of the semantics of the original taxonomic relationship of UNSPSC and eCl@ss for example are important modelling decisions, which eventually affect the usefulness of the resulting ontology. If we lack a formal definition of either the hierarchical relationships or the category concepts, then how we understand the taxonomic relationship determines the shape of the category concepts and vice versa. For example, the hierarchies of both UNSPSC and eCl@ss were created based on practical aspects of procurement, treating those commodities that “somehow” belong to a specific category as descendents of this closest category.

Basically there are the three known approaches of transforming a given products classification into an OWL ontology:

• Create one class for each taxonomy category and assume that the meaning of the taxonomic relationship is equivalent to rdfs:subClassOf.

• Create one class for each taxonomy category and represent the taxonomic relationship using an annotation property taxonomy SubClassOf.

• Treat the category concepts as instances instead of classes and connect them using a transitive object property taxonomySubClassOf

6.3. Semantic Interoperability in the European Interoperability Framework53 Semantic interoperability is one of the four levels of the European Interoperability Framework (EIF). The EIF provides recommendations that address specific interoperability requirements. Implementing the recommendations will create an environment conducive to public administrations establishing new European public services. This will help cultivate a European public service ecosystem with people familiar with interoperability, organisations ready to collaborate, and common frameworks, tools and services facilitating the establishment of European public services.

The EIF is one of a series of interoperability initiatives that aim to support the establishment of European public services. The figure below shows the relationship between these initiatives: the European Interoperability Strategy (EIS), the EIF, the European Interoperability Guidelines, European interoperability services and tools and activities to establish European public services.

53 http://ec.europa.eu/isa/documents/isa_annex_ii_eif_en.pdf


Figure 36 Interoperability initiatives supporting activities to establish European public services

There should be a systematic approach to governing interoperability at EU level, with specific goals set. To this end, the European Interoperability Strategy (EIS) provides a basis for an organisational, financial and operational framework to support cross-border and/or cross-sectoral interoperability. The EIS steers the EIF and all other associated efforts by setting strategic priorities and objectives.

Public administrations will need to agree a common scheme on how to interconnect service components. There are well-known and widely used technical solutions, e.g. web services, to do this, but implementing them at EU level will require concerted efforts by public administrations, including investment in common infrastructure. The basic elements of the conceptual model are depicted in the diagram below:

Figure 37: Conceptual Model for public services

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EIF is a set of recommendations, which specify how Administrations, Businesses and Citizens communicate with each other within the EU and across Member States borders). The other three levels of interoperability beyond Information (semantic) interoperability level are the legal, organisational and technical levels as depicted in the figure below.

On top of those four levels there is always a political context regarding cooperating partners with compatible visions, aligned priorities and focused objectives.

Figure 38: New European Interoperability Framework Levels

Achieving interoperability in this context means that there are parallel problems that need to be solved in a typical cross-border or domestic business

• Legal interoperability – legislative alignment

Aligned legislation relating to data exchange, including data protection legislation, when seeking to establish a public service.

• Organisational interoperability – organisation and process alignment

Public administrations should document their business processes and agree on how these processes will interact to deliver a public service and should agree on change management processes to ensure continuous service delivery.


• Information (Semantic) interoperability – the “what”

Public administrations should support the establishment of sector-specific and cross-sectoral communities that aim to facilitate semantic interoperability and should encourage the communities to share results on national and European platforms.

• Technical interoperability – the “how”

This is the process of moving data between two systems and covers the technical aspects of linking information systems. It is concerned with the setting up of a reliable delivery of information between PCCS systems. The platforms should be able to interoperate over an e-delivery hub ensuring end-to-end connectivity

In a point-to-point architecture, every system is connected to every other system. This has the advantage of having no central bottleneck or single point of failure. When used in the context of linking one system to a single other system, a point-to-point architecture is efficient and simple to implement. The major disadvantage of this technique when integrating several systems is the number of distinct interfaces needed to integrate even a small number of different systems.

A hub and spoke architecture reduces the number of connections needed to link several systems by linking them all through a central hub. Each system to be integrated needs a single adaptor to connect it to the hub and enable it to connect with every other system connected to the hub. One big disadvantage is that the hub is a single point of failure. The hub itself handles the processing and routing of data passed to it by connected systems. The hub becomes complicated as the number of connected systems increases and needs to have knowledge of every system. When a new system is to be added, the hub needs to be modified to support it.

In practice, a combination of point-to-point and hub and spoke models is often used to ensure that communications are as efficient as possible.

Interoperability is also one of the six design principles54 of Industry 4.0. (The other five principles are: virtualisation, decentralisation, service orientation and modularity). They consider interoperability as the ability of cyber-physical systems (i.e. work piece carriers, assembly stations and products), humans and Smart Factories to connect and communicate with each other via the Internet of Things and the Internet of Services.

It is worth mentioning the need for integrated standards. In the Industry 4.0 initiative two different devices might not be interoperable, even if they are following the same standard. This is a major showstopper for wide adoption of IoT technologies. Future tags must integrate different communication standards and protocols that operate at different frequencies and allow different architectures, centralised or distributed, and be able to communicate with other networks unless global, well-defined standards emerge.

54 http://www.snom.mb.tu-dortmund.de/cms/de/forschung/Arbeitsberichte/Design-Principles-for-Industrie-4_0-Scenarios.pdf

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6.4. Information (Semantic) Interoperability in European eGovernment systems55

The Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations (ISA)56 programme developed several semantic specifications and solutions for Public administrators in Europe as follows:

6.4.1. Core VocabulariesCore Vocabularies are simplified, re-usable, and extensible data models that capture the fundamental characteristics of an entity in a context-neutral fashion.

• Information exchange between systems

- to exchange data among existing information systems.

• Data integration

- to integrate data that comes from disparate data sources and creates a data mesh-up.

• Open data publishing

- as the foundation of a common export format for data in base registries like cadastres, business registers and service portals.

• Development of new systems

- as a default starting point for designing the conceptual and logical data models in newly developed information systems.

Four Core Vocabularies (formally published on the W3C standards track. It has been revised and renamed as the Registered Organisation Vocabulary - RegOrg) were developed by ISA: Core Person, Registered organisation, Core Location and Core Public service.

Several pilots were carried out (Flemish Government, e-CODEX, OpenCorporates.com and Oslo project)

6.4.2. The DCAT Application Profile for data portals (DCAT-AP)DCAT-AP provides a common specification for describing public sector datasets in Europe to enable the exchange of descriptions of datasets among data portals. DCAT-AP makes the following possible:

• Data catalogues can describe their dataset collections using a standardised description, while keeping their own system for documenting and storing them.

55 http://ec.europa.eu/isa/actions/01-trusted-information-exchange/1-1action_en.htm56 ISA is a collaboration beyond e-borders and sectors to support the modernisation of public administration through interoperability solutions. http://ec.europa.eu/isa/


• Content aggregators, such as the pan-European data portal, can aggregate such descriptions into a single point of access.

• Data consumers can more easily find datasets from a single point of access.

6.4.3. The Asset Description Metadata Schema (ADMS)ADMS (W3C has published the ADMS specification as a Working Group Note) is a simple specification used to describe interoperability solutions, making it possible for everyone to search and discover them.

ADMS allows:

• Solution providers, such as standardisation organisations and public administrations, to describe their interoperability solutions using the standardised descriptive metadata terms of ADMS, while keeping their own system for documenting and storing them;

• Content aggregators, such as Joinup, to aggregate such descriptions into a single point of access;

• ICT developers to explore, find, identify, select and obtain interoperability solutions from a single point of access.

ADMS implementations are:

• XRepository: a semantic asset repository owned by KOSIT, the German federal IT standards coordination office, which has implemented an ADMS export feature.

• Joinup: a single-access point to more than 4000 interoperability solutions included in the collections of more than 40 standardisation bodies, public administrations and open source software repositories. The interoperability solutions are described using ADMS, and all import, export, content management and search features are also based on ADMS. The owner of Joinup is the European Commission.

• Metadata Registry (MDR): supports an ADMS-compliant RDF export for MDR Named Authority Lists. It is owned by the Publications Office of the EU.

6.5. ISA2

ISA² is the follow-up programme57 to ISA and started on 1 January 2016 and will last run until 31 December 2020. Interoperability is now recognised as a condition for the modernisation of public administrations and receives an unprecedented political support as demonstrated by a dedicated chapter in the Digital Single Market strategy.

The new programme builds strongly on ISA, its predecessor with new elements such as:57 http://ec.europa.eu/isa/isa2/index_en.htm58 http://ec.europa.eu/isa/documents/isa_annex_i_eis_en.pdf

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• a focus on businesses and citizens

• an essential contribution to the Digital Single Market strategy

• the goal of increased collaboration and synergies with relevant EC initiatives

• the promotion of the use and maintenance of the European Interoperability Strategy58 (EIS), the European Interoperability Framework59 (EIF), the European Interoperability Reference Architecture (EIRA) and the European Interoperability Cartography (EICart).

6.5.1. e-TrustEx60 Trusted Information Exchange is a tool that facilitates the secure exchange of electronic documents between Public Authorities at European, national and local level via standardised interfaces. It allows Public Administrations to replace paper documents or files stored on DVDs and CDs by system-to-system exchange of information, using a technologically advanced platform61.

59 http://ec.europa.eu/isa/documents/isa_annex_ii_eif_en.pdf60 https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/software/openetrustex/description61 hhttp://ec.europa.eu/isa/documents/isa-2-conference/8-aristimuno-perez.pdf

Figure 39: e-TrustEx Platform

The interfaces of Open e-TrustEx are based on the core components defined by UN/CEFACT. e-TrustEx can easily be extended to any policy domain. It is composed of 3 elements:

• Technological platform: e-TrustEx offers a set of basic pre-processing capabilities such as schema validation and business rules validation, routing according to specific criteria, orchestration of information exchanges, rendering of information to human readable format and archiving.

• Services platform: e-TrustEx offers a set of capabilities and services common to all policy domains such as submission of XML files, large binary files, bundles, inbox, querying, rendering .

• Modules: e-TrustEx offers a set of sector-specific modules in policy areas such


as Procurement and Legislative support. These modules can be deployed in a dedicated or common runtime environment, and they can be easily connected to other applications through well-defined guidelines of e-TrustEx.

e-TrustEx benefits:

• Switch from expensive registered post to large scale digital exchange of information. This will lead to cost savings and reduced time-to-market.

• Digitise and secure the exchange of information between themselves and with other stakeholders across Europe. This will increase the efficiency of business processes and their transparency.

• Re-use and share lessons learnt, specifications, tools and components. This will contribute to additional cost savings and increased efficiency.

• Open e-PRIOR module offers e-Procurement business services enabling the European Commission and Member States to exchange procurement documents in digital format with their Suppliers.

6.5.2. Digital Public Services across borders62 Large scale pilots for cross-border digital public services.

Figure 40: Cross-border pilot

62 http://ec.europa.eu/isa/documents/isa-2-conference/9-novaretti.pdf

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Building blocks with technical interoperability

Figure 41: Technical Interoperability

eCatalogue as another building block


6.5.3. Core Public Service Vocabulary – The Italian Application Profile63

It was difficult to meet semantic and technical interoperability requirements due to lack of:

• a clear and agreed classification of public services

• a shared naming of the same public services offered by a variety of administrations (e.g. municipalities)

• a standard definition of the elements that allows one to clearly represent the concept of “public service”

Expected benefits:

• Harmonization in the public service data representation

• Facilitation in the exchange of data on public services in national shared infrastructures

• Basis for the development of the Italian public service catalogue

- Make it an authentic source for national shared infrastructures (e.g., Italian public system for e-identification)

Methodology with Controlled Vocabularies and OWL Ontology64

63 http://ec.europa.eu/isa/documents/isa-2-conference/0-lodi-long.pdf64 Ontology IRI: http://dati.gov.it/onto/cpsvapit

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Current project status:

They defined a first stable version of CPSV-AP_IT and produced:

• UML diagram

• OWL ontology in English and Italian

- visualized via user friendly web-based tools such as Web OWL and LODE

- Linked to DCAT-AP_IT and other recommended/standard ontologies (e.g., Dublin Core, FOAF, Org, etc.)

• Document describing the methodology and the technical specifications

• Public consultation on CPSV-AP_IT [1] available from 19 February to 21 March 2016

• They are working to launch the Italian catalogue of public services during SEMIC 2016 to be held in Rome

6.5.4. The Portuguese eProcurement Solution65 The eProcurement model used is as follows:

Figure 42: eProcurement model

Process:

• Simplified B2A relation in Tendering Processes;

• Reduced Paper consumption;

• Improved standard Tendering Process;

65 http://ec.europa.eu/isa/documents/isa-2-conference/4-quesado.pdf


• Improved communication;

• Operational management change.

Integrated IT systems:

• Integrating the Supply Chain

• Creating interoperability

• Increasing automation

Transparency:

• Monitor the value of contracts above and below thresholds

• Improve auditing processes

Security:

• eSignature and eRegistration

• Workflow document management

• Improved data auditing processes

6.6. European Commission’s Joinup Collaborative Platform66 The data exchange environment amongst Member States is very complex and creates many barriers and challenges to the exchange of data during the execution of European Public Services. These barriers include divergent interpretations of the data, lack of commonly agreed and widely used metadata, absence of universal reference data (e.g. code lists, taxonomies), the multilingual challenge, etc. Due to these pressures, semantic interoperability becomes an important element in many eGovernment and interoperability national agendas and interesting experience and lessons-learnt can already be shared at a European level. The Action tries to reduce the consequences of semantic interoperability conflicts.

The Joinup platform was created by the European Commission and replaces the Open Source Observatory and Repository (OSOR.eu) and the Semantic Interoperability Centre Europe (SEMIC.eu) websites.

Joinup was funded by the European Union via the ISA Programme.

Main features67:

66 https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/67 https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/sitemap68 https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/page/epracticeeu-migration69 https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/epractice/home

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a) ePractice68

ePractice69 offers services for the professional communities of eGovernment70, eInclusion71 and eHealth72 practitioners.

• eGovernment community covers all aspects of Internet use to deliver government information and services in order to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery in the public sector. The main topics include key eGoverment policies, and large-scale pilot projects on the interoperability of electronic procurement systems and the pan-European recognition of electronic identities. They are also looking at ways to make legislation processes understandable to everyone and to stimulate user involvement based on social networking and Web2.0 type tools. The eGovernment community provides news, events and relevant studies.

• eInclusion focuses on individual and community participation in all aspects of the information society: e.g.: promote the use of ICT to overcome exclusion, and improve economic performance, employment opportunities, quality of life, social participation and cohesion.

• eHealth community focuses on the use of modern ICT in support of health and health-related fields such as eHealth information networks, electronic health records, telemedicine and health portals

b) OSOR73

OSOR provides public administrations in Europe with better communication and collaboration tools to share experience with interoperability solutions for public administrations, to increase the number of users and to leverage synergies between the Osor.eu and Semic.eu user communities, while optimizing the use of public funding.

c) SEMIC74

Semantic interoperability refers to the preservation of meaning in the exchange of electronic information (see above at chapter 6.3 European Interoperability Framework). It means that the context of an information exchange, the receiver and the sender of information can understand and interpret it the same way. The lack of semantic interoperability between European e-Government systems is one of the major obstacles in the provision of cross-border and cross-sector digital public services.

• The catalogue of semantic assets is available in the Semantic Assets section of Joinup.

• All information on semantic interoperability is now available in the Semantic Interoperability Community (SEMIC) on Joinup. The community reflects the work that is carried out under Action 1.1 of the ISA programme in order to the establishment of common agreements on the meaning of different entities, e.g.

70 https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/egovernment/description71 https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/einclusion/description72 https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/ehealth/description

73 https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/page/osor.eu74 https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/page/semic.eu


basic data about persons, businesses or addresses, exchanged in the context of cross-border and/or cross-sector information exchanges.

d) FAQs75 are detailed in the Annex 3

6.6.1. Joinup Benefits• Access to a European repository of reusable semantic interoperability assets

(via the Joinup platform).

• Forum to identify opportunities for alignment at European level.

• Reduced development costs due to reuse during the initial development phase and due to less interoperability conflicts while integrating systems or providing cross-agency/domain/country services.

• A platform and central point of reference for collecting, organizing, storing and making available semantic interoperability assets, which have been created by various EU entities.

• An infrastructure that allows the Member States and the Commission services to identify conflicts, overlaps, duplication of work and possibilities for metadata and semantic assets.

6.6.2. Who is already sharing76? 42 partner organisations

75 https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/help_topics76 http://ec.europa.eu/isa/documents/publications/efir-publisher-leaflets-v02_en.pdf

7. Interoperability benefits of PCCS in the Procurement Process

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Increased interoperability is important in the procurement process. It requires increased usage of structured information, which facilitates both the exchange of information and the process. The economic and business aspects of PCSS interoperability benefits can be described easily with the help of use cases, which define the intended use, audience and shared understanding of the target and source.

7.1.1. Spend analysis and visibilityIt is the process of collecting, cleansing, enriching, classifying and analysing expenditure data with the purpose of reducing procurement costs, improving efficiency and monitoring compliance.

Table 5 Spend analysis process

The process analyses the current, past and forecasted expenditures to allow visibility of data by supplier, by commodity or service, by department within the organization, or by other criteria. Product or service classification is most commonly used to support activities such as the automation of business transactions, supplier rationalisation and the collation of accurate and meaningful spend data. If the classifying part uses interoperable classification systems then the whole process becomes transparent. Transparency in public procurement is critical. The manner in which a government conducts itself in its business transactions immediately affects public opinion and the public’s trust in good government. In addition to encouraging the public’s good will and strengthened trust, the more practical business benefits of transparency are increased competition and better value for goods, services, and construction.

Spend analysis can be used to make future management decisions by providing answers to such questions as:

• What was procured?

• Who procured it?

• When and how often did we procure it?

• With whom did we procured it?

• How did we procure it?

• How much did we pay for it?


Spend analysis is often viewed as part of a larger domain known as spend management which incorporates

• Spend under management

• Cashable savings and maverick buying reduction

• Process efficiency improvements

• Maximising leverage

• Commodity management

• Strategic sourcing

• Supplier rationalisation

7.1.2. Enable catalogue data exchange, harmonisation and synchronisation processesBy organising and validating catalogue data internal, external and network level is feasible. This process with the help of interoperable classifications supports granularity and aggregation internally within a company and between trading partners. It supports monthly, quarterly or annual updates at aggregate level. It is also accelerating new product introduction into a catalogue by denoting what type of product or service it is

7.1.3. Supports master data management and product or service information managementA single source, single entry high quality master data repository could be set-up including maintenance and services. The interoperable solution is eliminating also the language barriers. Furthermore, data enrichment and cleansing processes are also fa\cilitated – all products going forward should use the appropriate interoperable category code

7.1.4. Control and Uniformity across the organisationInteroperable classification systems bring uniformity across business divisions, business functions and even across business units within an organisation. Control and uniformity ties together all departments and divisions including business functions such as sourcing, procurement, settlement, marketing, sales and accounting. It allows purchasing activity to be viewed from macro or micro level. It demonstrates the value of spend with a particular supplier, or at a higher level the value of spend within a corporate structure.

77 Classification and catalogue systems used in electronic public and private procurement. ftp://ftp.cen.eu/cen/sectors/list/ict/cwas/cwa16138.pdf

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7.1.5. Cross referencing with existing classification systemsIn a typical organisation there are already classifications are in place, which serve a certain business purpose or cannot be changed. Examples of this are finance and inventory codes. Some department may use procurement facing codes, such as supplier generated category, international conventions (e.g. CPV , GPC, UNSPSC or eCl@ss) and part or catalogue codes. The first issue here is that it is neither desirable nor sensible to replace what you already have. The way forward is to phase in the new structure and cross-reference it so that the data becomes meaningful. This can be done in-house, but would be much better done by specialists who are providing interoperable mapping services.

7.1. Facilitate all external facing communicationAny communication message that references product data could use an interoperable classification system in order to allow mapping to different trading partners or third party solution providers such as: product specifications, price lists, shipment and share reports, inventory positions, product image management, Point of Sale (POS) data, joint business plans, order acquisition & shipment Status and customer response.

8. CPV interoperability with other taxonomies

This section builds on the recommendations originating from three project documents (CEN CWA 1613877:2010, CEN CWA 1652578 :2012 cMap and EC DG MARKT Review79 of the Functioning of the CPV Codes / Ssytem:2012) regarding CPV interoperability options with the other three taxonomies

In CWA 16138 four potential implementation options were suggested

• Enhancing CPV code set with the help of the other three systems

- Feasible and recommended

• Create a ‘super classification’ by harmonising all the four schemas

- Gradually feasible, maintaining difficult

• Create a mapping table and continue to maintain separate classifications

- Feasible, but not optimal

• ‘Common Class’ Concept

- Feasible and recommended

78 CEN/WS eCAT eCataloguing (Multilingual catalogue strategies for ecommerce and ebusiness). ftp://ftp.cen.eu/cen/sectors/list/ict/cwas/CWA16525_2012.pdf79http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/publicprocurement/docs/rules/cpv/121219_report-review-cpv-codes-functioning_en.pdf


In CWA 16525 cMap (as a follow-up project of CWA 16138)

• Created a complete mapping for 45 domains of all classification classes

• Identified two different type of mapping tools (at 4.5.2 Categories of Mapping Tools on page 35 of CWA 16525) but the document focused on only Category A

- Category A: Mapping tools to map from one classification system to another classification system

- Category B: Mapping tools to map product information to a classification system.

• Improved the mapping quality between classification systems with

- A mapping methodology,

- A common maintenance process for the mapping,

- Alignment improvements for the classification systems

- A definition of an architecture for an open standardised classification collaboration platform

- A synchronisation process.

In EC DG MARKT Review – Three Scenarios for improving CPV

• Self-development of attributes and keywords/synonyms – feasible scenario, but time consuming

- Structure, data model and content improvement is needed

- Attributes and keywords/synonyms should be added

- Revise supplementary vocabulary

• Collaborate with another classification system - feasible, but mapping maintenance needs significant resources

- Map all the elements of this classification system with keywords for the corresponding CPV element

- Use CWA 16525 cMap project recommendations

- CPV Maintenance improvement

• Shorter release cycles (last release was in 2008)

• Distinguish between major and minor releases.

• ThinkaboutwhetherareflectiononthelegislativenatureoftheCPVshouldbeinitiatedinordertoallowmoreflexibility.

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• No CPV integration in e-procurement environments - CPV only for publishing and identifying tender notices – as it is used today

- Allow different product classification systems to coexist

- CPV would merely be optimised - generally fewer details, better structure in some areas (e.g. for works)

- In e-procurement, including e-catalogues, there would be freedom of choice as to which classification system to apply,

- Contracting authorities

• Use CPV only for publishing and identifying tender notice

• Anotherclassificationfore-catalogues

- Bidders

• use the CPV for identifying procurement opportunities

• Anotherclassificationfore-catalogues

- Several classifications could be used (GPC, UNSPSC, eCl@ss, other)

• Classificationsarenotlinkedtoeachother

• CPV improvement is needed (see scenario 1 self-development above)

• Classificationsarelinkedtoeachother

• CWA 16525 cMap recommendations (see above)

8.1 Evaluation of the interoperability of CPV with other taxonomies and the potential of using other PCCS simultaneouslyThe cMAP80 project analysed four PCCS for an initial mapping and research in regards of methods, methodologies and platforms. cMap is part of the CEN eCAT workshop and builds on the CC3P project conducted before.

The English versions of the product classification systems used were:

• CPV 2008

• GPC ‘As at 30 June 2008’

• UNSPSC v11

• eCl@ss 6.0.1

80 http://www.cmap.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=7&Itemid=101


The following Figure below shows that there is one mapping table available per each CPV domain and each system maps to all the three other systems. The mapping directions are bidirectional. Since there are 45 CPV domains the total number of mapping tables is 45.

Figure 43: Mapping tables81

8.1.1. Mapping challengesBecause of the complexity of the mapping challenges a fully automated mapping alignment approaches seem unrealistic and not available in the market. The main challenges are as follows:

• 1st level domains are designed very differently

- The ‘Clothing’ domain in CPV is spreading over several domains in other systems: six domains in eCl@ss, nine domains in GPC and six domains in UNSPSC

• Hierarchical logic differences ‘IS-A’ (inheritance relationship) vs. ‘HAS-A’ (child parent relationship)

• Technical description vs. Intended Usage

- In CPV ‘Shirts’ and ‘Sport Shirts’ are classified in two separate domains while they could be classified in one domain in another classification system

8.1.2. Mapping methodologyThe approach chosen was based on a Canonical ontology process model82. A canonical model is a design pattern used to communicate between different data formats. A form of enterprise application integration, it is intended to reduce costs and standardize on agreed data definitions associated with integrating business systems. A canonical model is any model that is canonical in nature, i.e. a model which is in the simplest form possible based on a standard, application integration (EAI) solution.81 Mapping tables are downloadable: ftp://ftp.cen.eu/cen/sectors/list/ict/cwas82 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_model

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Numerical values were not used due to the fundamental differences. Not only the 1st level domains of each system were mapped separately but rather the complete classification systems with all domains were used to find the equivalent codes. This combined matching includes matches such as Element level matches, String based matching, Language based matching, Constraint based matching, Alignment reuse, Structural level matchers, and Taxonomy based techniques.

The relationships to search for “best available match” through multiple edges have been analysed. The original CPV hierarchical structure has been kept as much as possible.

8.1.2.1. Mapping architectureIn reality most of the public and private companies are using more than one classification systems. Buyers align products differently to multiple internal classifications (Buyer, Merchandiser, and Logistics). Sellers profile products in multiple views and align to internal classifications without compromising own systems. In order to establish links between 2 or more systems the files need to be imported into a platform that has a mapping engine, which contains the rules to fulfil the mapping between the different product classification systems. The import is supported by using different, standard-based import formats for product classification systems, such as OWL or the BMEcat electronic catalogue format. The mapping engine works on that internal database which is designed according to a specific and standard-based data model. Following the mapping the results should be accessible to the users. By using Excel as import and export format, the mapping results are readable for human users as well as computer calculations.


Figure 44: Mapping Architecture

8.1.3. Mapping results

8.1.3.1. Mapping relationship among the 4 classification systemsThe following mapping relationships in terms of cardinality were considered – as per the table below:

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Table 6: Mapping alternatives

Explanation:

• 121: One class in the source system is matching with only one equivalent class of the target system.

• 12M: One class in the source system is matching with more than one class of the target system.

• M21: Several classes in the source system are matching with one class of the target system.

• M2M: Several classes in the source system are matching with more than one class of the target system.

• N21: Classes are missing in the source system but there is one class available in the target system.

• 12N: One class is available in the source system but there is no equivalent class in the target system.

• N2N: Classes are missing in both the source and the target systems but there are classes available in one of the / in both of the other two target systems.

• N2M: A class is missing in the source system but there are several classes available in one of the / in both of the other two target systems.

• M2N: Several classes are available in the source system but there is no equivalent class in the target system.

In the following example (Figure below), the complexity of the mapping process is demonstrated


• CPV classifies a ‘LaserJet Toner Cartridge’ product with a code of 30125400-2 titled ‘Toner Cartridge’

• In eCl@ss there are two alternative matching codes

- 19140601 ‘Toner, toner unit laser printer’ OR 19140690 Ink toner

- Mapping relationships: 12M from CPV’s perspective and M21 from eCl@ss perspective

• In GPC 10001156 ‘Printer Consumables’ with 3 Brick attributes (dedicated usage – 6 values, Type of office machinery consumable -8 values and Type of printer-10 values) describe 6*8*10 = 480 Brick Variants

- Mapping relationships: 12M from CPV’s perspective and M21 from GPC perspective

• In UNSPSC there are three alternative matching codes (there are no definitions in UNSPSC to figure out which one of those 3 codes are the best match)

- 44103103 ‘Printer or fax toner’ OR 44103116 ‘Kit for Printer’ OR 44103120 ‘Toner Collectors’

- Mapping relationships: 12M from CPV’s perspective and M21 from UNSPSC perspective

8.1.3.2. Mapping example

Figure 45:Mapping example

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8.1.3.3. Main findings from the mapping exerciseThe detailed mapping statistics are available in Annex 1.

The very low ratio of the perfect 121 match (in all the cases are below 18%) - when one class from the source system is equivalent with only one class in the target system – underlines the relevance of the chosen methodology being semi-automatic. The person has to interact with the systems to make the final decision.

As long as there is no commitment between the classification authorities to a formal representation the mapping between the product classification systems will be a time-consuming and mainly manually-driven process, even when using any methodology or mapping support tool

Specifically:

• 121 matching (perfect match)

- CPV (versus the target system) and vice versa

• to GPC =14%

• to UNSPSC=17%

• to eCl@ss=10%

- GPC (versus the target system) and vice versa

• to UNSPSC=13%

• to eCl@ss=7%

- UNSPSC (versus the target system) and vice versa

• to eCl@ss=8%

• The most matching 121 + 12M cardinality is between CPV and UNSPSC = 24%.

- I.e. in 24% of the CPV cases you can find equivalent class(es) in UNSPSC.

• The least unavailable equivalent classes for the CPV classes are in UNSPSC = 28

• There are only 15% of the cases when NO classes are available in both the CPV and UNSPSC systems but there are classes in eCl@ss and / or in GPC.

• There are only 13 % of the cases when NO class is available in the CPV system and there is 1 or >1 equivalent class(es) in GPC.


8.2. PCCS StrategyThe figure below demonstrates the Strategy elaborated in details in the CWA 16525 cMap documents

Main findings:

• Pillars of the Strategy

- Ensure that the mapping table is easily ‘accessible’ for all users

- Build an understanding of the role, contribution and value of mapping tables

- Integration with the other classification (and maybe with other) standards without compromising governance

- Proactive support with necessary ‘tools’ that facilitate the access, use and governance of the mapping table

• Process

- Agree with this strategy

- Continue the robust governance and maintenance

- Alignment between the 4 classifications

- Continue to provide and develop support tools

- Work more closely with user communities

- Strategic review on all the other industry / standards bodies

• Migration

- Ongoing governance rules and principles determination

- Conflict resolution process

- Framework on change management process flows

- Publication formats

- Technical Environment

- Reporting statistics

- Communication

• Testing the methodology, methods, mapping approach and ontology mapping tools

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Figure 46: PCCS Strategy

Two strategy elements were suggested: Harmonization (from CWA 16138) and Interoperability (CWA 16525)

8.2.1. Harmonization StrategyThe class level harmonization strategy addresses the following key points

• The harmonized parts should be integrated into a database based on the Gen-ePDC data model, which is generated based on the ISO 13584 Standard as a basis for the development and maintenance

• Synchronization points between these maintenance processes can synchronize the individual development processes i.e., each change in a classification system should be taken into account and be sent to the related classification system agencies who prepare synchronization points to discuss the propose changes and take it over into their own classification system or at least update the mapping with the changes

• Properties and concept descriptions are synchronized between the standards bodies and the classification authorities to reach product descriptions based on standardized properties and concepts

• Class level integration for product data harmonization is the starting point


• For example:

- CPV classes as starting point

- Enhance CPV classes by eCl@ss attribute lists and attributes

- Enhance CPV by missing classes of eCl@ss

- Use eCl@ss and/or standardized attributes for class description

- Extend this combined classification system by GPC bricks and brick attributes

- Extend this combined classification system by UNSPSC classes where necessary

Figure 47: PCCS Harmonization Strategy

8.2.2. Interoperability StrategyThe Interoperability strategy ensures independent but aligned interoperable development and maintenance strategy:

• Continue to develop and maintain the distinct classification systems (by each classification authority)

• Create a widely-available mapping among the four classification systems

• Align the governance model, business rules and the overall process of the four classification systems to the cMap mapping tables

• Maintain and update the mapping tables regularly considering release changes of the classification systems and/or the integration of further classification systems

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• Conflict resolution processes should be in place

Interoperability advantages:

• Acknowledges different business needs are met by different classification systems independently

• Avoids governance and change management conflicts between the classification authorities

• Enables mappings between classifications

• Cost effective access to the codes of other classification systems

• Provides integration opportunities and migration advantages

• Satisfies user communities

Envisaged risks:

• Setting up and ongoing maintenance of the platform needs funding

• Additional process introduction can increase complexity

• Mapping maintenance is time consuming and difficult task

• If release policies are not aligned then a proliferation of mapping tables could cause chaos in the user communities

Figure 48: PCCS Interoperability Strategy


Figure 49: Governance model comparison

Harmonization and Interoperability could be considered as complementary strategy components.

9. Suggested scenarios for Brazil

• Implement CPV – available in 23 languages including Portuguese

• Feasible, cost effective and realistic solution

• Implement a Category B Mapping solution by mapping each product to a classification system (as per the CWA 16525 cMap document but it was not explored further there).

- This approach is not focusing on the mapping process between product classification systems but gives a practical implementation option in a master data repository

- Multiple PCCS are not linked together but used parallel

Example (see Figure below): A product identified with a barcode such as Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) is classified – assigned to classification category codes of a PCCS in a Master Data Repository. The PCCS are not linked together.

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Figure 50: Product classified in various PCCS

• Implement Category A tools (Mapping tools to map from one classification system to another classification system ) to support the user community in mapping in their own master data system

o This mapping tool can help find the equivalent code in another system – see example below

• A certain SME has a GPC PCCS at his ICT system and can use GPC to participate in the Global Data Synchronisation Network (GDSN) process in whichhiscompanyandtheircustomeraresynchronisingandexchangingproduct catalogue data to enable smooth trading

• The GPC UNSPSC mapping will allow this GDSN SME link him to a UNSPSC commodity code for spend analysis purposes

• Similarly this process can be applied vice versa in which a UNSPSC SME want to use GDSN without having GPC system in place

o The same logic could be applied if a GPC – CPV mapping tool could facilitate the participation of this particular SME in the GDSN process


• Implement PCCS changes in the Master Data Repository

• Follow-up the market if any relevant mapping tool is available – go for it

• Influence Harmonization and Interoperability by active participation in the Governance

10. The perspectives of SMEs to improve their access to public procurement markets

In the European Union SMEs are targeted beneficiaries in most government-funded projects. The approximately 20,8 million SMEs registered in the EU represent 99,8 percent of all enterprises and produce more than a half of European GDP So it is a best practice to conduct pilots with SMEs at all Government-funded projects.

10.1. EU Projects related to eProcurement83 There are a couple of EU projects related to eProcurement that affects SMEs too.

• e-SENS84 - Electronic Simple European Networked Services to enable cross-border electronic procurement procedures

• CEF85 - Connecting Europe Facility has Digital Service Infrastructures (DSIs) for delivering networked cross-border services for citizens, businesses and public administrations, including some for e-procurement.

• IMI86 - Internal Market Information System for Public Administrations to help public authorities from one EU country verify the information and documentation provided by procurement companies established in another EU country.

Figure 51: GPC UNSPSC Mapping table example

83 http://ec.europa.eu/growth/single-market/public-procurement/e-procurement/projects/index_en.htm84 http://www.esens.eu/85 https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/cef/og_page/catalogue-building-blocks

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• e-PRIOR87 – Open source e-procurement platform. It is an intermediary between the back-office applications of the public administration and PEPPOL. It is an open-source e-procurement platform that allows practical implementation of interoperable electronic services within any public administration. The Open e-PRIOR package includes also a web portal allowing suppliers, such as SME and individuals, to manually encode their invoices via a web form.

10.2. E-Business Standard and Protocols (EBSP) related obstacles and tools for SMEsA recent study is prepared for the EU Commission titled SMEs’ access to public procurement markets and aggregation of demand in the EU88. The study shows that SMEs involved in about 46 percent of public procurements above EU-thresholds and 58-59 % below threshold

A chapter of this document is addressing the ‘Enhancement in competition by use of eProcurement tools’. This is based upon a survey that indicates that only 73% of Contracting Authority or Entity (CAE) use online eProcurement tools and 27 % still manual paper based processes. Overall eProcurement tools affect competition but not aggregation of demand

67 percent indicated that the use of eTools will increase the competition for the SMEs. However, this requires knowledge and competence of the e-Tools at the SME side. PEPPOL solutions give any economic operator the possibility to communicate with any CAE using their own procurement or ERP-system.

The main impact is the reduction of process costs by establishing lean procurement processes and reuse of data in the complete electronic procurement process and improves competition

86 http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/imi-net/about/index_en.htm87 https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/software/openeprior/description88 By PwC, ICF GHK and Ecorys 2014. http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/publicprocurement/docs/modernising_rules/smes-access-and-aggregation-of-demand_en.pdf


Table 7: eProcurement tools impact on SME competition

eProcurement Tool (PEPPOL components) Impact on competition for SMEs

eSignature (interoperability between the different e-signature schemes)

Reduce cost and simplify procurement process, increase market potential across border.

eSourcing tool (with demand aggregation)

More accurate specifications in the RFPs for decision of GO / or NOGO. Negative effect on competition due to aggregation of demand.

eNoticing and eTendering (in TED) Increase market opportunity for SMEseAttestation (Virtual Company Dossier or VCD) -inter-operable eDocument solution

Cost reduction and simplified procurement process by reducing administrative burden for the SMEs

eAwarding and eContract (evaluation and contract validation)

Increased transparency on detailed level about the selection criteria. Reduced administrative burden for the SMEs and

eCatalogue (can be a component of the pre-award tendering process or the post-award purchasing process

Increase market possibilities. CAE could also use it to source goods or services or obtain product or pricing details. Reusable catalogue input for ordering and invoicing.

eOrdering, eInvoicingReduce process cost and increase transparency for any economic operator – reduce administrative burden.

10.3. EU Commission takes action to open up international markets89 A very recent new tool wants to discourage discrimination of EU companies in procurement markets of third countries and promote open access to public procurement markets around the world. The new Instrument allows the Commission to initiate public investigations in cases of alleged discrimination of EU companies in procurement markets. The existing EU commitments – including in the WTO Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) and bilateral trade agreements – remain unaffected by this initiative. To avoid a negative impact on development, the proposed instrument will not apply vis-à-vis suppliers from least developed countries or the more vulnerable developing countries, it will not apply to tenders made by EU SMEs, so as to facilitate their participation in the EU procurement market the application will be limited to contracts above a certain threshold and the scope of possible action will be targeted to what is deemed necessary.

89 http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-178_en.htm?locale=en

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10.4. PROZEUS90 to support SMEsPROZEUS is a German government’s initiative and stands for the promotion of the eBusiness competence for SMEs (up to 500 employees from the manufacturing, consumer goods and trading sectors).

• Provides free information about eBusiness and relevant standards in the form of brochures, checklists and guidelines and best practices

• eBusiness support includes data format definitions and rules for the exchange of information

By integrating eBusiness and eBusiness standards, each SME can optimise relationships with suppliers’ shorten response time, improve security in planning, reduce costs, increase customer satisfaction, acquire new customers, enter new markets, improve the company’s image, create a distinctive profile and boost revenue

Ebusiness PCCS support includes:

• eExchange of data: Automatic ordering, billing and notification of dispatch.

• eCatalogues: Updates

• e Marketplaces: Benefiting from sales opportunities in global markets.

• eProcurement: Using supplier shops and rationalizing purchasing.

• Master Data Management

In a catalogue exchange B2B example (see figure below) a German SME can flexibly handle catalogue exchanges with the help of eCl@ss, BMEcat and openTRANS eBusiness standard with freely available documentation

90 http://www.prozeus.de/imperia/md/content/prozeus/prozeus_materialien/faq_english.pdf

Figure 52: B2B Catalogue exchange


Another PROZEUS example demonstrates the development of an eProcurement91 portal

This is a B2B order platform for the eProcurement. The SAP/OCI enables customers with SAP systems to connect directly to the eProcurement system. eCl@ss 6.2 ensures that the product data in the MMS is enhanced by the necessary eCl@ss data fields and import functions are created for eCl@ss information. eCl@ss product data can be transferred to the connected ePortal and be made available to the customer there in BMEcat files.

91 http://www.prozeus.de/imperia/md/content/prozeus/veranstaltungen/forum_stammdaten_alpha-b__ro.pdf92 https://www.cen.eu/news/brochures/brochures/eSMEs.pdf

Figure 53: eProcurement Portal

10.5. CEN Focus Group eSMEs92

PROZEUS is also involved in this focus group.

The objective of the CEN Focus Group eSMEs is to help SMEs integrate eBusiness procedures into their daily work. Main activities:

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• Gathering and disseminating practical knowledge, information, experience, and guidelines concerning the use of eBusiness and eBusiness standards.

• Identifying SME support gaps in the area of eBusiness and eBusiness standards.

• Creating a wiki for planning and communicating recommended actions to overcome identified gaps.

• Developing courses and tutorials targeted specifically to small and mid-size enterprises in the areas of product data description and exchange standards.

• Developing a methodology to effectively disseminate information and material.

• Creating an eBook on the results of the Focus Group.

Five categories of standards are addressed:

• Identification standards - used to identify products and services, organizations and companies, locations, logistics and transport. Their use is fundamental in eBusiness for the transaction of goods and services between companies and the use of barcodes and RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) based standards

• Classification standards (CPV, eCl@ss, ETIM, GPC, and UNSPSC.)

• Catalogue exchange formats (BMEcat, cXML, Datanorm/ Eldanorm and PRICAT)

• Transaction standards (EANCOM®, EDIFACT, GS1-XML, OAGIS, ODETTE, openTRANS and UBL)

• Process standards (Category Management, CPFR, ebXML, Joint Forecasting, OSA, RosettaNet and VMI).

Figure 54: Standard categories


10.6. PEPPOL supports SMEs with a ToolboxFor a typical SME process, automation does not necessarily reduce headcount when staff fills multiple roles, hence no cost savings on postage and paper if PDFs are sent via email. Open Source options are only viable for SMEs with access to skilled IT developers. PEPPOL offers a Toolbox that could be beneficial for an SME both in short and long term.

• Short term the Open Source versions of the PEPPOL demonstration client tools are well suited to support small volume transactions but SMEs would still need skilled support for ongoing software maintenance

• Longer term PEPPOL technologies could be part of software packages affordable for SMEs as well

SMEs can reach out to all public sector entities that are connected to PEPPOL and it facilitates organisations to create VAT compliant invoices. Furthermore, it can support dispute management, payments, e-Catalogue functionality, basic accounting, cash flow overviews and contract management -free of charge. SMEs could be directly connected to the electronic official company registers in 23 countries -making it easier for government agencies to perform background checks on small suppliers, speeding up the sales process for SMEs.

11. Overview of the use of PCCS in the Oil & Gas sector

The oil and gas industry is one of the most important industries in Brazil. In this chapter the cMap mapping results and PIDX the most important PCCS are described in detail. For products cMap has mappings among CPV, GPC, UNSPSC and eCl@ss while PIDX codes are mapped to UNSPSC. For Oil and Gas services, there are only codes in CPV and UNSPSC.

11.1. cMap mapping table resultsTwo domains were mapped: Petroleum products, fuel, electricity and other sources of energy and Oil and Gas services

11.1.1. Petroleum products, fuel, electricity and other sources of energy mapping93

93 Mapping tables in excel format are downloadable from: ftp://ftp.cen.eu/cen/sectors/list/ict/cwas

121

In this chapter the results are illustrated from CPV’s aspect – for the other three aspects (GPC, UNSPSC, eCl@ss) see the hyperlink at the footnote below.

• 121 match (equivalent codes)

- 26 of 371 total codes (7%) CPV to eCl@ss

- 15 of 371 total codes (4%) CPV to GPC

- 27 of 371 total codes (7%) CPV to UNSPSC

• N21 match ( no code in CPV, but 1 code at the other)

- 199 in eCl@ss, none in CPV

- 58 in GPC, none in CPV

- 83 in eCl@ss, none in CPV

• N2N match Not available in CPV but available in at least one of the three others

- 110 codes are neither in CPV and eCl@ss but there is a code in either at GPC and/or UNSPSC

- 249 codes are neither in CPV and GPC but there is a code in either at eCl@ss and/or UNSPSC

- 224 codes are neither in CPV and UNSPSC but there is a code in either at GPC and/or eCl@ss


11.1.2. Oil and Gas services mappingAt the Oil and Gas services there were neither eCl@ss nor GPC codes available, hence the mapping was between CPV and UNSPSC. The results are depicted in the table below.

Table 8: cMap mapping Oil and Gas services

94 http://www.pidx.org/about-pidx/

• 21 of 83 total codes (25%) are identical (121 match)

• 12 codes present in CPV is not available in UNSPSC (N21 map)

• 40 codes present in UNSPSC is not available in CPV (12N + M2N)

11.2. PIDX Petroleum Industry Data Exchange94 (PIDX) was founded by the American Petroleum Institute in 1987 and originally developed and maintained eCommerce standards such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and XML standards. As of 2010 PIDX is a not for profit organization that encourages the use of Data standards across the Oil & Gas sector. PIDX now has 14 business documents and business processes covering the full Procure to Pay process between trading partners from well to filling stations Essentially there are no competing standards to PIDX in Oil & Gas sector.

PIDX incorporates not only product classification schemas and taxonomy with over 4100 industry product and service noun/modifier templates but also a Data Dictionary with eBusiness terms. PIDX Standards are royalty fee, technologically agnostic and free to use standards for Products and Services, Secure Data Exchange, Transaction Documents, Dictionary, Classification Guidelines and Business Processes.

PIDX covers two segments that involve highly complex business processes and practices

• upstream segment: oil and gas exploration and extraction, from the reservoir and well to the refinery gate.

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• downstream segment: includes the refining of oil and gas products and actual sale to consumers.

- Supports real-time data transfer immediately after a transfer is completed – truck, barge, pipeline, etc.

- Supports data clearinghouse functionality – single hub for all communications for a supplier.

- Right-to-lift supports product allocation and credit management at company owned and third party facilities.

- Standardized data sets include company I.D.s, products, terminals/depots, and carriers/hauliers.

The development and implementation of uniform electronic commerce standards is the main aim of PIDX. PIDX members are operators (oil companies), suppliers (service companies), technology providers, and other organizations with a material interest in the development of oil and natural gas electronic business standards.

PIDX develops standards by following rigorous, clear, and transparent processes in committees that consist of parties interested in the development of the standard. PIDX sets up meetings, workshops, educational conferences and related events globally so that members and other interested parties can collaborate.

Figures

• PIDX standards have broad adoption95 (> 120 Oil & Gas companies ) in every continent, with Operators, ( large, small, independents and NOCs ) suppliers and third party technology solution providers

95 http://www.pidx.org/value-proposition/

Figure 55: PIDX Standards Global Implementations


• PIDX standards address specific Oil & Gas data needs that are not covered by generic B2B xml standards, such as well name, well location, field name, lease name

• 18 Third Party Solution Providers (networks, marketplaces) offer services to the Oil & Gas industry with PIDX standard in their eCommerce solutions for their customers.

• The organisational structure allows volunteer participants to work together in an environment fostering collaborative sharing yielding benefits from exposure to different perspectives, lessons learned by others, and shared expertise.

• In 2015, the annual transaction count was 905,000, which equates to invoices totalling over USD 15 billion.

• Claimed benefits

- Process Efficiencies: Agility, Standardisation, e.g.: paperless

- Reduced Cost: Improved accounts payable and operational efficiencies

- Increased Accuracy: Single Source of Data Entry, Reduced Transcription Errors, Using Common Data between Partners

- Increased Transparency: Data is Exchanged in a Secure and Auditable Way, All Transactions are Recorded in a System

- Speed of Doing Business: Reduced cycle times, Minutes; Acknowledgement of Delivery is Automatic

11.2.1. PIDX Interoperability with UNSPSCIn 2004, PIDX and UNSPSC signed a Memorandum of Understanding in order to align the two schemes with the following benefits:

• It enables the PIDX community to link to a broader global standard, to ‘roll-up’ to a higher classification level, and to leverage the expertise of PIDX in order to improve the UNSPSC.

• PIDX can also submit change requests to UNSPSC to ensure harmonization and alignment of the two systems at the Commodity level to the extent feasible in the relevant segments

The 4,100 templates of PIDX96 (with Nouns, Modifiers and Attributes are mapped to version 10.0501 UNSPSC

96 http://www.oilandgasstandards.org/dl_folder/3_PIDXInternational_EN.pdf

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Figure 56: PIDX UNSPSC mapping illustration

Transaction documents in XML define the Content standards and the Transaction standards for secure e-commerce.

Figure 57: Transaction Documents in XML


12. Conclusion

The recommended scenario is to implement PCCS in stages in Brazil as follows:

Stage 1: Implement CPV without any code changes (as it is now in Europe).

• In order to accomplish that an agreement is needed between EU and Brazil (potential subject of EU-Brazil dialogues97).

- There is no need to develop a different Brazilian version of CPV but the necessary authorization of the EU is required, so that no copyrights are infringed. It is understood that the EU Publications Office had given SMPE a hint that the authorization was uncomplicated.

• The legal framework should also be introduced. A good example is an Action plan for the implementation of the legal framework for electronic public procurement98 for the 10 new countries that joined the EU in 2004.

- The relevant directives are detailed in the Action Plan (it is not the subject of this study) however, by following the Actions a coherent eProcurement framework could be established in an open, transparent and non-discriminatory way. The Actions can set up rules for eTendering. Successful implementation of eProcurement requires changing administrative practices, not only those directly linked to the procurement process, but also indirectly, such as budgetary reviews.

• The Functional requirements for conducting public eProcurement under the EU framework99 could be useful as well

- This document suggests not only functional requirements but also provides with technical solutions in compliance with the new legislative framework and

- Creates eLearning demonstrators simulating the public eProcurement functionalities described by the new directives, allowing administrations and suppliers to familiarise themselves and to experiment with it

• Volume I is presenting information and activity flows for all eProcurementprocedures, functional requirements, non-functional requirements, an overview oftechnicalspecifications

• Volume II is presenting an in-depth technical analysis (Use Case analysis) for the main actors and functionalities of an eProcurement system supporting all eProcurement procedures.

Stage 2: Collaborate with the entities that steward UNSPSC, GPC and eCl@ss.

• Nevertheless, the mid or long term solution could be the harmonization of these product classification systems to reduce the number of PCCS to be used within eProcurement and so prevent from generating different sets of product description for the different PCCS.

97 http://ec.europa.eu/growth/industry/international-aspects/cooperation-governments/eu-brazil/index_en.htm98 http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/publicprocurement/docs/eprocurement/actionplan/actionplan_en.pdf

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13. References

[1] Aberdeen Group, The Procurement Outsourcing Benchmark Report (2007). http://www.sourceoneinc.com/downloads/Procurement_Outsourcing_Report.pdf

[2] Aberdeen Group, The CPO’s Agenda Report (2012). http://www.perfect.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/06/The-CPOs-Agenda-for-2012.and-Beyond.pdf

[3] Aberdeen Group, E-Procurement Benchmark Report (2008). http://onget.net/documents/Aberdeen_eproc_sept2008.pdf

[4] Ariba’s Best Practice in eCatalogue Management (2010). http://exchange.ariba.com/servlet/JiveServlet/previewBody/1193-102-3-1207/Best%20Practices%20in%20eCatalog%20Management_FINAL.pdf

[5] A.T. Kearney’s guide for e-sourcing best practices, Jumpstarting Your eSourcing Initiative (2010). http://www.atkearneypas.com/knowledge/publications/2010/2010_07_JumpStartingYoureSourcingInitiative.pdf

[6] BME catalogue. http://www.bme.de/en/start/

[7] CEN Business Interoperability Interfaces for public procurement in Europe (BII) http://www.cenbii.eu/wp-content/uploads/What-is-BII.pdf

[8] CEN CWA 16138: Classification and catalogue systems used in electronic public and private procurement. ftp://ftp.cen.eu/cen/sectors/list/ict/cwas/cwa16138.pdf

[9] CEN CWA 16525: eCAT eCataloguing (Multilingual catalogue strategies for ecommerce and ebusiness). ftp://ftp.cen.eu/cen/sectors/list/ict/cwas/CWA16525_2012.pdf

[10] CEN cMAP project.http://www.cmap.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=7&Itemid=101

[11] CEN cMAP mapping tables. ftp://ftp.cen.eu/cen/sectors/list/ict/cwas

[12] CEN Focus Group eSMEs. https://www.cen.eu/news/brochures/brochures/eSMEs.pdf

[13] Common Procurement Vocabulary (CPV) Guide (2008). http://simap.ted.europa.eu/documents/10184/36234/cpv_2008_guide_en.pdf

[14] Current CPV Codes (2016). http://simap.ted.europa.eu/web/simap/cpv

[15] eCl@ss content (2016). www.eclasscontent.com

[16] eCl@ss White paper on Industry 4.0. http://www.eclass.eu/static/documents/wiki/Whitepaper/eCl_Whitepaper_Industrie40_de.pdf

99 http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/servlets/Doc1ad3.pdf?id=22191


[17] eCl@ss catalogue. https://www.eclassdownload.com/catalog/conditions.php

[18] eCl@ss download. http://www.eclassdownload.com/catalog/eclass_releases.php/language/en

[19] eCl@ss content. http://www.eclasscontent.com/index.php?id=90000000&version=9_1&language=en

[20] eCl@ss FAQ. http://wiki.eclass.eu/wiki/FAQ

[21] eCl@ss IT Service Providers. http://wiki.eclass.eu/wiki/Category: IT_Service_Providers

[22] eCl@ss Templates. http://wiki.eclass.eu/wiki/Templates

[23] eCl@ss Use cases. http://wiki.eclass.eu/wiki/Use_cases

[24] German Standardization (DIN/DKE) Roadmap. https://www.dke.de/de/std/Documents/RM_Industrie%2040_V2_EN.pdf

[25] EC DG MARKT Review. http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/publicprocurement/docs/rules/cpv/121219_report-review-cpv-codes-functioning_en.pdf

[26] EU Commission takes action to open up international markets. http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-178_en.htm?locale=en

[27] EU-Brazil dialogues. http://ec.europa.eu/growth/industry/international-aspects/cooperation-governments/eu-brazil/index_en.htm

[28] EU Public Procurement Action Plan. http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/publicprocurement/docs/eprocurement/actionplan/actionplanen.pdf

[29] EU eProcurement Framework. http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/servlets/Doc1ad3.pdf?id=22191

[30] European Interoperability Framework (EIF). http://ec.europa.eu/isa/documents/isa_annex_ii_eif_en.pdf

[31] EU ICT impact assessment. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/341889/725524/2006-2008-ICT-IMPACTS-Summary-Report.pdf/511f221c-d4d7-4fb3-8558-dad771d8c7f3

[32] EU Projects related to eProcurement. http://ec.europa.eu/growth/single-market/public-procurement/e-procurement/projects/index_en.htm

[33] EU Electronic Simple European Networked Services (e-SENS). http://www.esens.eu/

[34] EU Connecting Europe Facility (CEF). https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/cef/og_page/catalogue-building-blocks

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[35] EU Internal Market Information System for Public Administrations (IMI). http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/imi-net/about/index_en.htm

[36] EU Open source e-procurement platform (e-PRIOR). https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/software/openeprior/description

[37] EU SMEs’ access to public procurement markets and aggregation of demand in the EU By PwC, ICF GHK and Ecorys (2014). http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/publicprocurement/docs/modernising_rules/smes-access-and-aggregation-of-demand_en.pdf

[38] GS1 Global Product Classification (GPC) browser. http://www.gs1.org/1/productssolutions/gdsn/gpc/browser/

[39] GS1 Global Product Classification (GPC 2015). www.gs1.org/gpc/dec-15

[40] IEEE Computer Society interoperability definition. https://www.ieee.org/education_careers/education/standards/standards_glossary.html

[41] ITDS Business Case Page 11 (2011). http://www.itds.gov/documents/pic_final.pdf

[42] Industry 4.0 building blocks: http://www.profibus.com/nc/download/brochures-whitepaper/downloads/arc-white-paper/display/

[43] Industry 4.0 Reference Architecture Model (RAMI). http://www.omg.org/news/meetings/tc/berlin-15/special-events/mfg-presentations/adolphs.pdf

[44] Industry 4.0 eCl@ss Whitepaper. http://www.eclass.eu/static/documents/wiki/Whitepaper/eCl_Whitepaper_Industrie40_de.pdf

[45] Industry 4.0 Design Principles. http://www.snom.mb.tu-dortmund.de/cms/de/forschung/Arbeitsberichte/Design-Principles-for-Industrie-4_0-Scenarios.pdf

[46] http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=URISERV:l22008

[47] KPMG, The Power of Procurement, A global survey of Procurement functions (2012). https://www.kpmg.com/US/en/IssuesAndInsights/ArticlesPublications/Documents/the-power-of- procurement-a-global-survey-of-procurement-functions.pdf

[48] OECD adaptation framework. http://www.oecd.org/sti/ieconomy/2092477.pdf

[49] http://www.oilandgasstandards.org/dl_folder/3_PIDXInternational_EN.pdf

[50] Pan-European Public Procurement Online (PEPPOL). http://www.peppol.eu/

[51] PIDX. http://www.pidx.org/about-pidx/

[52] PIDX Oil and Gas standards. http://www.oilandgasstandards.org/dl_folder/3_PIDXInternational_EN.pdf


[53] PIDX value proposition. http://www.pidx.org/value-proposition/

[54] PROZEUS to support SMEs. http://www.prozeus.de/imperia/md/content/prozeus/prozeus_materialien/faq_english.pdf

[55] PROZEUS eProcurement portal. http://www.prozeus.de/imperia/md/content/prozeus/veranstaltungen/forum_stammdaten_alpha-b__ro.pdf

[56] The Hackett Group, e-procurement poll (2014). http://www.sap.com/bin/sapcom/de_de/downloadasset.2014-12-dec-10-09.the-hackett-group- understanding-e-procurement-part-1-quantifying-the-benefits-pdf.html

[57] United Nations Global Marketplace (UNGM) introduced UNSPSC (2012). https://transition.ungm.org/Publications/UserManuals/Suppliers/UNSPSC%20Codes%20Guide%20-%20Suppliers.pdf

[58] UNCTAD Information Economy Report (2015). http://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/ier2015_en.pdf

[59] UNSPSC Usage Roadmap (2015-16). https://www.unspsc.org/Portals/3/Documents/UNSPSC%20road%20map%202015-2016.pdf

[60] UNSPSC training. https://www.unspsc.org/Portals/3/Documents/User%20Guides/UNSPSC%20Training-%20Population%20of%20UNSPSC%20in%20GDSN-%20v1.pdf

[61] UNSPSC Implementation Toolkit. https://www.unspsc.org/Portals/3/Documents/UNSPSC%20Tool%20Kit%20from%20GS1%20Healthcare%20USR1.0.pdf

[62] UNSPSC search code (2016) www.unspsc.org/search-code

[63] UNSPSC codes (2016) https://www.unspsc.org/Public/UNSPSC

[64] UNSPSC Newsletter (2015). https://www.unspsc.org/Portals/3/Documents/UNSPSC%20Newsletter%20February%202015.pdf

[65] UNSPSC to replace GSIN Codes (2016). http://entreprisescanada.ca/eng/blog/entry/5174/

[66] WTO report 2013 titled E-commerce in developing countries. https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/ecom_brochure_e.pdf

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14. Annexes

14.1. Annex 1: PEPPOL Laptop Data Set Example

Figure 58: eCl@ss based Catalogue


Figure 59: Master data eCl@ss PEPPOL collaboration

14.2. Annex 2: cMap Mapping StatisticsThe Mapping statistics table below has four vertical (I-IV) sections:

• I. Mapping from CPV to the other three classifications systems

• II. Mapping from eCl@ss to the other three classifications systems

• III. Mapping from GPC to the other three classifications systems

• IV. Mapping from UNSPSC to the other three classifications systems

in addition, 6 horizontal sections that detail the statistics by cardinalities:

• Subtotal 1: total of 121 & 12M mappings: one class is available in the source system and there is one or more than one equivalent class(es) in the target system

• Subtotal 2: total of 12N mappings: one class is available in the source system and there is no equivalent class in the target system

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• Subtotal 3: total M21 + M2M mappings: more than one class is available in the source system and there is one or more than one equivalent class(es) in the target system

• Subtotal 4: total of M2N mappings: more than one class is available in the source system and there is no equivalent class in the target system

• Subtotal 5: total of N2N mappings: no class is available in the source & target systems

• Subtotal 6: total of N21 + N2M mappings: no class is available in the source system and there is one or more than one equivalent class(es) in the target system

Figure 60: Mapping statistics


14.3. Joinup FAQs General

Why should I register?

Some of the portal’s services and areas, such as uploading, are restricted to registered users. In the forum, you can also post as a registered user. Reading forum messages is possible without registration. You must also register to receive our newsletter.

Who can register?

Even though there is a clear focus on public administrations within Joinup, the portal is open to everyone. Anyone interested in eGovernment and interoperability solutions for public administrations is eligible to join the Joinup platform.

What are Kudos?

Kudos are virtual credits awarded to registered users, each time they contribute content to Joinup. In other words: the higher the total number of Kudos a member has, the more active he/ she is.

How does it work? Each activity a registered user performs on the portal is awarded a credit, a numerical value, which is associated to the member’s profile.

Kudos do not only help to locate highly active members within the community; they also serve to track down users with comments, cases and posts highly rated by their peers. Kudos also affect the order of the People’s list, giving more visibility and recognition to active members.

Are there any incentives for members with more kudos?

Currently, users with many kudos do not receive prizes or incentives from Joinup aside from being recognised for it on the portal itself.

I would like to earn more kudos, how do I do that?

Simply by keeping your user profile up-to-date and by contributing your content to Joinup.

I am very active on the Joinup portal but have not been given the kudos I deserve, what am I doing wrong?

If you find that your contributions and the activities you have participated in were not correctly rewarded please contact the Joinup staff via the contact page.

How can I see how many kudos I have?

Member’s kudos are shown on their personal profile. The easiest way to view your own kudos is to go to your personal profile and ‘Preview your profile as others see it’.

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I participate on the portal but have not received any kudos!

Kudos are updated on a regular basis (but not on a daily basis). If the kudos are not added to your personal profile within 7 days after your participation please contact the portal staff.

How many kudos can I gain?

All activities which score kudos are defined in the following tables: kudos

Activities awarded with Kudos

The following activities are awarded with Kudos:

https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/page/what_are_kudos

How can I change the portal language?

As of today, the portal language cannot be changed. You can, however, select documents from our resource database in their different languages of origin. You will find the option to select documents according to their language in their sub-menus. At a later stage, we will implement multilingual features.

I don’t receive the newsletter in my own language; what can I do?

For the time being, newsletters will be available in English only.

Is my profile publicly visible?

Yes. Just like the profile of any registered users, your profile is publicly visible to all users of the Joinup platform. However, you do have the option to hide your e-mail address from other users, by editing the privacy settings for your “My Page” which is accessible via “My Dashboard”. Users will no longer see your e-mail address, but can still send you e-mails via the “Send a message” feature of the platform.

How can I remove my profile?

If you would like to remove, your accounts please login with the account that you want to remove, edit your “My Page”, and click the “Delete Account” button.

I have lost my password and cannot login. How do I recover my password?

In case you are experiencing problems while accessing your Joinup account, please follow these steps in order to reset your password:

Go to the login page: https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/user/login

Click the link ‘Request new password’;

You will receive an e-mail in your inbox;


Follow the instructions of the email to activate your new password before trying to log in.

Please remember that you can customise your password by editing your page “My Page” which is found in “My Dashboard”.

If problems persist, please do not hesitate to contact the Joinup Helpdesk

Does Joinup Platform support SSH?

Unfortunately, Joinup doesn’t support SSH at the moment. If you need any help, please contact the Joinup Support Team via the Contact page and we will do our best to help out.

How to enable the anonymous download feature?

When creating a project, a project owner can decide to allow users to anonymously download release files. This is a setting you can alter in the description of your project while editing it.

By enabling this option, a user who is not logged in and attempting to download a release file will have to fill in a popup to decide whether he wants to:

• provide a short feedback (the user will be forwarded to the login / registration page. After login, he will be redirected to the release page)

• remain anonymous (the download starts immediately).

To allow anonymous download, tick the checkbox “Allow anonymous download” while filling the form to propose your project. When your project is created, you can further edit this setting by editing your project (?). By default, “Allow anonymous download” is disabled. Why? The platform sends out a post-download survey to registered users who have downloaded an asset/software release to capture their feedback.

Open Source Software

What is FLOSS ?

FLOSS stands for Free/Libre/Open-Source Software. According to GNU.org, free software is a matter of the users’ freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it means that the program’s users have the four essential freedoms:

• The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.

• The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.

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• The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others. By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

What is proprietary software?

Software which does not provide the user with the above four freedoms is called proprietary software.

So is FLOSS free?

It is not price which sets FLOSS apart from proprietary software. Some proprietary software is distributed gratis - so-called “freeware” or “shareware” - without giving the four freedoms described above.

On the other hand, FLOSS is not without costs. The software itself may be available at zero price, but the distributor may charge for various services, such as packaging the software, making it available, providing documentation and maintenance, or adapting it to a client’s needs.

What is GPL, the GNU General Public License?

The GNU General Public License (GPL) is central to the free software universe. It gives users the right to use, modify and redistribute software licensed under it, while only demanding that they again use the GPL to distribute their modified versions. This reciprocal mechanism gave rise to a fast-growing pool of free software.

What is ISA’s policy towards FLOSS ?

The primary objective in this area is to promote the uptake of Open-Source Software in public administrations:

Encouraging Europe’s public administrations to consider and assess the most advantageous IT solutions for their particular needs;

Reducing the costly replication of public sector software that already exists in similar form elsewhere, lowering the cost of eGovernment solutions and helping spread good practice throughout public administrations;

Ensuring that the market for IT solutions remains competitive;

Reducing ISA’s own costs for application development and maintenance;

Helping ensure that Open-Source Software solutions can compete on a level playing field with proprietary solutions.

Where can I find out more about Open-Source Software?

The links below provide a quick overview of some of the more significant websites regarding Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS). This list, however, is by no means complete:


• The Free Software Foundation: http://www.fsf.org/

• The GNU project: http://www.gnu.org/

• Wikipedia articles on

- free software: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software

- open source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source

• The Open Source Initiative: http://opensource.org/

• SourceForge, the largest site for collaborative FLOSS development: http://sourceforge.net/

• The FLOSSImpact study, an extensive empirical discussion of the impact of FLOSS on the European ICT market: http://flossimpact.eu/

Legal questions

Are there other Free/OSS licences? What about the EUPL?

F/OSS licences are (too) numerous. Facing this proliferation, the Open-Source Initiative (OSI) is the main organisation maintaining a list of “approved licenses”. The European Union Public Licence (EUPL) was created by the European Commission to comply with the European legal context: it is currently the sole licence which has official value in 22 linguistic versions. The EUPL was approved by OSI. The EUPL reduces the impact of license proliferation by providing a compatibility list, which includes the GPL.

Is the use of the EUPL licence compulsory?

No, any licence that is recognized by the OSI (Open Source Initiative), or the FSF ( Free Software Foundation) will be accepted for distributing projects hosted on Joinup. For end-user applications and solutions that should be protected from “appropriation”, the use of the European Union Public Licence is highly recommended as common legal framework across Europe, because it is valid in all official European languages. The EUPL is especially written in consideration of European law and practice.

Joinup has a “licence wizard” to facilitate licence selection.

What to do if I discover a possible violation of the licence or of the Joinup principles?

You should report it to the Joinup legal service, which will investigate and try to solve the issue amicably. If needed, the Joinup administrator will remove / put off line all projects, pages or texts that appear – whether originally or later – to be contrary to the Joinup principles. Other forges (federated forges) web masters will be involved as the case may be. In addition, the European Commission may also use any other legal

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instrument that could be suitable for enforcing the respect of the applicable copyright law.

Does “Open source” require that source code of any modified versions be posted to the public?

No. You are free to make modifications and use them privately, without ever releasing them. This applies to organizations (including public administrations and companies) that can make and use modified version internally without ever releasing it outside.

Are Joinup hosted projects “non-commercial” (program downloaded “for free”, free of licensing charges)?

No, everyone has the right to sell copies, or to ask for a contribution. Services (training, implementation, suport etc.) are nearly never for free. Some licences (like the EUPL) states that the licence is “royalty free”, meaning that the licensor will not try to manage “permanent royalties” depending on the number of users, of computers, the country where it is distributed etc. However, they are other commercial business models than managing royalties.

Can I modify the EUPL?

I like most of the EUPL provisions, but I would like to change some points, making my own version. Can I do that?

The EUPL is copyrighted by the European Community (the European Union after the Lisbon treaty). It cannot be modified. You can use modified EUPL terms in another license provided that you call your license by another name and do not give any impression that your licence is authored by the European Commission or any other institution, without specific authorisation.

My program licensed under the EUPL uses components licensed under the GPL!

Simply “using” components covered by any GPL version has no impact on licensing your own code. Even when a larger work appears to the end user to be a unique program, its components, when their source code are combined without being modified and merged together, stay licensed under their different primary licences. All copyright attributions must be respected and covering licenses provided. In their purpose to limit software appropriation, free software advocates (FSF in particular) claim for extending GPL coverage in some cases of linking. There is no case law confirming this in Europe (and software licensed under the EUPL is protected against appropriation anyway). Joinup maintains a list of EUPL compatible licences. In case of doubt, please contact the Joinup legal expert that could ask (to the component licensor) a formal FOSS licence exception for distributing under the EUPL.

Which project can be hosted on Joinup?

The use of Joinup is regulated by 10 principles. Principle #2 states that Joinup is reserved for software and projects that are of particular use for public administrations in


Europe, and/or produced by the public sector. The reference to public administrations is not exclusive of other usages: for example a Geographical Information System may be considered as “answering to public sector needs” (road making etc.), even if it can also be useful for private purpose (home building, truck or property management etc.). The reference to Europe is not exclusive either: Joinup welcomes projects that are initiated and could be downloaded and used everywhere, provide they may be useful to public administrations in Europe. The project owner can be a public administration, however it can be any other person (individual, association, company) developing software that is of particular use for public administrations.

Who can provide me practical legal support on software, assets etc.

Depending on your specific project, a JOINUP legal expert can provide you with opinions related to open source licensing (which free/open source licence could you use), combining/linking, distribution, procurement, possible exceptions etc. You may get in touch with the expert through the online contact form and selecting the category: ‘Questions on legal issues’.

Disclaimer: This is a free of charge JOINUP service, delivered ‘as is’ based on the received information.Theopinionsarenotanofficialpositionof theEuropeanCommission. Opinions should not be assimilated to a formal legal consultation from a private lawyer to his client.

Cases

Can I submit a case in my own language and not in English?

Your case must be submitted in English so that all community members can enjoy reading your cases. You can, however, attach documentation in its original language.

What is a case?

Joinup cases are written summaries of real-life eGovernment, eHealth and eInclusion projects or interoperability solutions developed by public administrations, entrepreneurs and corporations. Case studies included in our portal are based on actual experiences, and reading them provides a picture of the challenges and dilemmas faced by the professionals working in the new eGovernment domains.

Why are cases important?

The cases on the portal will become the basis for case learning, whereby we will examine the experience from as many analytic viewpoints as possible and draw conclusions that are useful to practitioners.

The case I want to submit already exists on the Joinup portal; can I submit it again or edit it?

Yes, you can edit your case (there is no need to submit it again). Please edit your case and keep it up to date. We are very interested in learning about a case from different

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viewpoints, and may in fact contact you to suggest editing options. We retain the right to revise and shorten your summary and main learning points for quick access. Please make sure that the information you provide on your case reflects the most relevant current status.

Someone has added tags to my case or post. Why were they added and by whom?

In order to better facilitate access to your case, our editors might add the corresponding tags to your case if they feel it will improve its visibility on the Internet.

Does Joinup accept cases that have been published on other websites?

Cases already published on other websites are welcome. You must, however, be the case author, or make the content your own. If you are a service provider discussing a public sector project, we will ask you for contact details and will check whether your client is aware of your activities and is comfortable with your entry. We may end up making a case entry whereby both of you are given the opportunity to present and/or comment separately.

Can I publish several cases?

You will be able to publish all cases you consider interesting for sharing with no limitations on number. The more cases you share with the portal community, the more we all benefit.

What is the Editor’s choice?

The Editor’s Choice distinguishes good practice cases that are particularly interesting to the community due to the quality and extent of the information provided, the scope of the project, its innovation and relevance for the sector. This label is given by the Joinup Editorial Team.

How can I submit a case?

We aim to make case registration a straightforward and fast process. Hence, in order to submit a case to Joinup you just have to log-in with your username and complete a template with some mandatory fields. Please visit the Help page for more detailed information

We strongly recommend authors to keep updating the cases on a regular basis with new relevant data or findings.

Are all the cases submitted published?

Joinup publishes, in good faith, all cases correctly submitted, although in some circumstances the Editorial Board reserves the right to question suitability and remove a contribution. In these occasions, Joinup may contact in the author and work with him/her to clarify the situation. Cases are occasionally withdrawn at the request of the


author or an institution.

Which are the main Style Guidelines for cases?

The abstract or summary should identify the major problems/key issues of the project and summarize the findings and recommendations of the author. The abstract has to motivate the reader to continue reading the main body of the article.

The abstract is just one paragraph. It has no line breaks, dashes or links. It should not be longer than 10 lines.

The Target Group is also described in one paragraph, with no line breaks between sentences.

Throughout the text the author may use dashes (-), but no bullets or any other sign.

Leave a blank space after each paragraph.

Try to limit the number of hyperlinks and statistics included throughout the body of the case. This type of information should be provided using the References, Related Cases or Additional Documents sections included in the template (right hand navigation menu).

In order to be able to publish the case, all mandatory fields must be completed with accurate data.

Interoperability solutions

What is an interoperability solution?

This term describes resources that support the exchange of data in distributed information systems. Joinup currently provides Open-Source software, syntactic and semantic interoperability solutions to its users. Syntactic interoperability solutions define common data structures, e.g. XML schema. Semantic interoperability solutions, on the other hand, deliver a central terminology to ensure that data elements are interpreted in the same way by communicating parties.

Who develops the interoperability solutions available on Joinup?

The interoperability solutions provided on Joinup are contributions from European eGovernment projects. Therefore we do not develop the solutions ourselves, but we encourage existing interoperability projects to make their results available for reuse by other projects and users through our platform.

What standards are used for the semantic solutions repository?

The registry is based on open standards from the OASIS consortium: OASIS/ebXML Registry Information Model and OASIS/ebXML Registry Services Specification. Please contact us for further information.

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Can I withdraw a solution once it is published?

Yes, as the owner you can withdraw your solution at any time.


14.4 Abbreviations

ABC

ABDI

APEX-BRASIL

B2B

B2G

BME

CEN

cMap a

CNC

CNI

COMPRASNET a

CPV

CWA

DG MARKT

EBSTP

EC

eCl@ss

EU

GEM

GPC

IBICT

JAP

KOS

MCTI

MDIC

MEAT

Brazilian Cooperation Agency

Brazilian Agency of Industrial Development

Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency

Business to Business

Business to Government

Bundesverband Materialwirtschaft, Einkauf und Logistik e.V.

European Committee for Standardization

Classification Mapping for open and standardized product classification usage in eBusiness

National Confederation of Commerce

National Confederation of Industry

Brazil government e-procurement system: public procurement at the federal level

Common Public Procurement Vocabulary (of the EU)

CEN Workshop Agreement

Internal Market and Services Directorate General (EU)

E-Business STandards and Protocols

European Commission

Content Development Platform (Germany)

European Union

Global Entrepreneurship Monitor

Global Product Classification (GS1 system)

Brazilian Institute of Information in Science and Technology

Joint Action Plan (Brazil-EU)

Knowledge Organization System

Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation

Ministry of Industry

Most Economically Advantageous offer

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NBS

NCM

PCCS

PES a

SEBRAE

SERPRO

SIMAP

SME

SMPE

TED

UNIDO

UNSPSC

Brazilian Nomenclature of Service

Nomenclatura Comum do Mercosul

Product Classification and Catalogue System

Portal Empresa Simples (Portuguese acronym: Doing Business the Simple Way)

Brazilian Micro and Small Business Support Service

Federal Data Processing Service

Information System for European Public Procurement

Small and Medium Enterprises

Secretariat of Micro and Small Enterprises

Tenders Electronic Daily

United Nations Industrial Development Organization

United Nations Standard Products and Services Code
