Norwegian Digitalisation Agency optimises public procurement with Commission's Big Data tool

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Digdir, the Norwegian Digitalisation Agency, is using the Connecting Europe Facility's (CEF) big data tool, the Big Data Test Infrastructure (BDTI), to help optimise public procurement in Norway.

Digdir has been helping Norwegian public administrations in their digital transformation for six years. They have already implemented a PEPPOL network, based on the eDelivery and eInvoicing building blocks, to digitalise invoicing in public procurement. This network allows public and private organisations to seamlessly exchange and automatically process digital invoices.  

Now, Digdir is looking to help improve digital public procurement, or eProcurement, even further by gathering and analysing big datasets on transactions in this area.

How does the Big Data Test Infrastructure (BDTI) help?

The Big Data Test Infrastructure (BDTI) Building Block helps public administrations and projects led by the public sector improve the citizen experience, increase government efficiency and boost business through big data.

Since February 2019, the BDTI team and Digdir have been working together on a pilot project to analyse procurement data, in particular related to transactions. The ready-to-use virtual environment and analytical capabilities of BDTI helps to gather and analyse relevant transactional data and present it to certain private businesses and public organisations. These stakeholders can then use the data aggregated by BDTI to gain key insights, identifying process bottlenecks and optimising their own practices and interactions with other organisations in the value chain. Some of this data will also be made publicly available.

Moving forward

Within the context of this BDTI pilot, Digdir hopes to make transactional data publicly available in 2021. They are also considering using the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) building block in the future which, alongside eDelivery, eInvoicing and BDTI, would be the fourth building block used by Digdir. 

The data, tools and results from this BDTI project could be shared with future pilots. While already engaged in using the eDelivery and eInvoicing building blocks, this pilot demonstrates the value of BDTI in the context of a wider strategic project. Its ready-to-use virtual environment allows agencies like Digdir, which is committed to maximising the benefits of digitalisation for Norwegian public administrations, to experiment with new ideas and share their insights with others, in a collective effort to make the Digital Single Market a reality.