Publications Office of the EU
Minutes - TED eSenders Webinar 2020
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Minutes

Annual TED eSenders Seminar

30 November - 2 December 2020

MINUTES

NB: Some of the information in these minutes may no longer be fully accurate, given the evolving nature of developments, in particular related to eForms.

For the latest information, please consult:
https://simap.ted.europa.eu/web/simap/eforms
https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/fpfis/wikis/display/TEDeSender
https://github.com/OP-TED/eForms-SDK

Welcome and introduction – Antonio CARNEIRO - Publications Office of the European Union

Mr CARNEIRO welcomed the guests and thanked them for their adaptation to the extraordinary situation due to COVID. He mentioned that the focus of OP’s TED Unit is now on eForms and the new application eNotices2.

Adoption of the agenda and approval of the minutes from last year – Maria Manuela CRUZ - Publications Office of the European Union

Ms CRUZ introduced the seminar agenda, stressing that the main focus this year will be on eForms as by 2023 they will definitely replace the current forms.

TED XML, Latest updates - Cyrille ZACHARIE - Publications Office of the European Union

Mr ZACHARIE introduced the main features of the release 2020: the TED XML versions, the XSLT Changelog, the Schemas changes (XSD R2.0.8 and XSD R2.0.9, to include for example NUTS 2021), the Validation Tool changes (Alert on old versions), the new features for rules on mandatory Contracting Authorities email, on Legal Basis, the NUTS to be used or the previous publication. Explanations on implementation of a solution to fix UTF-8 character coding issues have also been provided. Finally, according to the implementation planning and provisional dates provided, the release will be fully operational on 27/04/2021. 
As a reminder, the full presentation is available in the Agenda section.

The following questions were addressed:

- The version v.038 of the Validation Tool will go in production if and only if the UK will not be part of the single market from January 1st. Could you please confirm it ? 
OP Answer: an official communication on this matter will be published soon on the eSenders workspace.

-    Which are the precise dates for the TED schema update? 
OP Answer: New TED schemas are available in qualification from 15/12/2020, go live in production 26/02/2021, end of the transition period 8 weeks later.

-    Does this new TED schema affect the current eNotices application or only for eNotices2? 
OP Answer: The current eNotices is concerned. Using the new Nuts 2021 is applicable for all notices, no matter its origin.

-    When will the new release be available on the simulation endpoint? 
OP Answer: We have made the new schemas available on the Simulation endpoint, together with Qualification endpoint on 15th December.

eSentool, Current status - Annalisa VACCA - Publications Office of the European Union

Ms VACCA presented the evolution of eSentool during the year 2020 (version 2.10.0, 2.10.1 and 2.11.0).  She reminded the general conditions for the use of eSentool, the points of contact available to eSenders, and also where to find the documentation for eSentool.
As a reminder, the full presentation is available in the Agenda section.

The following questions/comments were addressed:

-    Are these statistics available per eSender ? / Can we see error statistics by eSender? 
OP Answer: Statistics on errors and warnings will be sent beginning of each year for the N-1 year.

-    Comments: Interesting statistics, they should also be expressed in % of total sent notices in the same period. eSenders sending thousands of notices a month from a lot of authorities may have a low percentage but a large absolute value.

Quality issues in eSenders' notices - Annalisa VACCA - Publications Office of the European Union

Ms Vacca explained first the update of eSentool’s rules (Contract Type vs Main CPV code, total value of the contract/lot in section V not higher than the total value of the procurement in section II, rejection of Defence notices missing the Language(s) in which tenders may be submitted).
She then communicated on the correct use of the standard form Corrigendum F14, on the reduction of the time span between publication of the contract notices and corrigenda, on the suppression of notifications “waiting for information”, on UTF-8 character coding issues, on the rejection after reception of notices containing a mix of languages and on the prevention in publishing personal data in notices.
Ms Vacca also explained the New Publication Approach, which started on 30/07/2020: 

  • notices are published on the last available publication day according to the «within 5 days» rule and the Yearly Production Plan (defined by OP),
  • the Contracting Authority is informed about the publication date just after the reception of the notice by the OP.

Finally, statistics for the last 12 months were presented concerning the eSenders’ requests to TED Help Desk, the eSentool notices’ quality and the production’ figures (eSenders’ rejected and «low quality» notices).
As a reminder, the full presentation is available in the Agenda section.

The following questions/comments were addressed:

-    Concerning the languages used to send notices, will eSenders be allowed to send any combination of languages, or is this already the case? E.g.: Belgium can send notices in English, along with Dutch / French / German notices (which are the official languages)? 
OP Answer: Notices can be sent in one or many linguistic versions as long as the language is one of the official languages of the EU and that each linguistic version does not contain a mix of languages.
-    What is the exact rule on UK post transition period? 
OP Answer: Reject notices from UK (Country code in section I.1, and in case of joint procurement: if ALL country codes are UK)
Except: 

  • if the Contracting Authority is an European institution/agency or international organisation (section I.4 in R2.0.9, section I.2 in R2.0.8)
  • or if the notice is a CAN, Corrigendum, Modification having a previous publication on TED (section IV.2.1 in R2.0.9, section IV.3.2 in R2.0.8)
  • or if the notice is related to a procurement financed by European Union funds (section II.2.13 in R2.0.9, section VI in R2.0.8)

With
CAN = F03, F06, F13, F15, F18, F21-CAN, F22-CAN, F23-CAN, F25.
Corrigendum = F14 (in R2.0.9 and R2.0.8)
Modification = F20
Note: OP will reject any Move form (T01, T02) from UK 

-    A list of allowed UTF-8 characters has been mentioned. What will happen if an eSender sends a character which is not in the allowed list (e.g. due to a copy/paste)? Will the notice be rejected? When will this rule be implemented?
OP Answer: The rule is already implemented.
When the case occurs, an error against rule R006 is raised, and the notice is rejected.
For example:

What could change in the future, is that OP will reject some special characters which lead to issues during the rendition.

-    eForms foresee a preferred date of publication of the notice: what is the minimal delay TED will need to treat notices? What is the minimal delay between reception of the notice and the planned publication date that eSenders should take into account? 
OP Answer: The future eForms production workflow will be shorter than the current one thus, we foresee to publish quicker than today. Notices will in any case continue to be published within 5 days.

-    48 Hours buffer zone between dispatch the EU notice and national publication: does this mean that they can take place at the same time? 
OP Answer: Notices can be published at national level on the same date they are published on TED.  This is already possible today as the contracting authority is informed about the publication date on TED just after the dispatch of the notice and therefore can align the national publication thereto.

-    Will the qualification process for eForms remain the same as the current one or is there a plan to change it? 
OP Answer: The qualification will be discontinued. Anybody will be able to use the web services in eNotices2 for submitting a notice.

-    Why is https://github.com/eForms/eForms/issues dead? Is the discussion moved elsewhere? 
OP Answer: This discussion was managed by DG GROW, not by the Publications Office.

-    Is the eForms excel file also available in other languages (in excel format)? If so, where can they be found?
OP Answer: The excel spreadsheet is available only in English but the Regulation, containing the equivalent to the excel spreadsheet, is published in all the EU official languages.

-    Wouldn't it be better to have a forum where technical questions regarding the eForms implementation can be addressed? This way eSenders can discover each other’s challenges.
OP Answer: OP is assessing the best way of sharing technical topics linked to the eForms implementation. OP will inform eSenders about the outcome of the discussion soon on the eSenders workspace.

-    It was mentioned that there will be changes to how corrigendum notices will be handled in the future (corrigendum notices will be rejected if the notice they are referring to is not already published). When will these changes become effective? It would require us to make changes to our application as well.
OP Answer: This is just a “production” rule not requiring any developments from your side and therefore the rule is already applied by our contractor since mid-November 2020.

-    With the eSentool update earlier this month there was a downtime of about 3 hours. Why didn't we receive an email notification about it like we did in the past? 
OP Answer: OP faced a technical punctual incident due to a bug in a new software tool used for the installation.

-    Could you add examples of non-minor changes to the Instructions for the use of the F14? 
OP Answer: OP had a few customers in the past that made a mistake with the total value of the procurement and wanted to change it with the F14, but it clearly isn't a minor change. OP will complete the document on how to use the F14 with more examples.

eForms, General overview - Manuela CRUZ - Publications Office of the European Union

Ms CRUZ provided an update on the implementation of the eForms project. eForms must be fully functional on 25/10/2023.
A first step has been completed with the publication, on 13/11/2020, of schema and documentation (https://simap.ted.europa.eu/en_GB/web/simap/eforms).
Future steps, to be ready by November 2022, are the establishment of reception applications (for eNotices users and eSentool users), the creation of a Central Validation Service (CVS), the capability to publish eForms on TED and the implementation of machine to machine services.
As a reminder, the full presentation is available in the Agenda section.

eForms implementation - Carmen CICIRIELLO - Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs - eProc-Team

Ms Ciciriello reminded the regulatory framework of eForms, explained the expected benefits (improve data quality/ reusability of data, opportunity to better understand how governments spend money, developing insight into market dynamics …), the responsibilities and the involvement of each stakeholder (DG Grow, OP, and Member States).
As a reminder, the full presentation is available in the Agenda section.

eForms implementation, Part II : eForms, UBL schema - Yves JORDAN - Publications Office of the European Union

Mr Jordan explained the available schemas according to the conformance or the compatibility per notice types, the information needed, and the mandatory extensions to implement eForms.
Existing gaps with the Regulation annex, in term of naming, datatype and Fields (added, dropped), have also been pointed out.
Further information is available in the Powerpoint presentation (see the Agenda section).

eForms implementation, Part III : eForms IDs - Yves JORDAN - Publications Office of the European Union

In this presentation, Mr Jordan explained:

  • the numerous identifiers defined, for identification (definition of the ID), or for reference to internal or external objects (use of existing ID values),
  • the need for “IDs” to refer to objects is model dependent (i.e. data structure),
  • the format and/or values assignment, for IDs, must follow some commonly agreed rules.

Further information is available in the Powerpoint presentation (see the Agenda section).
The following questions were addressed (for eForms implementation part II and III):

  • Is this XYZ ID removal going to create highly de-normalized notices, repeating multiple times the same information? 

OP Answer: Information will not be entered multiple times. There is a difference in models and most of the “XYZ ID” elements are not needed anymore. There will be some repeated information at lot level when shared between multiple lots, and notices will be “de-normalized”.

  • If the notice ID and procedure ID are provided by OP, will eSenders also be required to request these for below threshold publications (that will only appear on the national platform, so no publication on TED)? 

OP Answer: OP does not have an answer yet to this question because OP are not yet working on the below threshold notices (however the eForms definition of the procedure ID is exactly the same as for the above threshold notices and therefore could be generated by the Publications Office as well). OP will clarify and give a clear position on this subject as soon as possible.

NB: Following the seminar, a new approach on how IDs will be assigned has been adopted.

eForms, Future of data quality - Bertrand LORENTZ - Publications Office of the European Union

Mr Lorentz also emphasized the improvement of data quality that eForms will enable. He listed the challenges raised by the implementation of eForms: regulation requirements/restrictions, permissiveness of UBL schemas, specific structure of business groups, 1200 fields available. 
Then, Mr Lorentz explained the reinforcement/modification of the business rules with eForms and the creation of the Central Validation Service (CVS), single point to check if a XML notice is valid for publication on TED.
All the details are available in the Powerpoint presentation (see the Agenda section).

The following questions/comments were addressed:

-    Does this validation approach mean that in UBL schemas the mandatory/optional information is not modelled? Or is  this just for "conditional mandatory" fields?  
OP Answer: The schemas do not model the mandatory/optional information from the regulation because those schemas come from the UBL international standard.

-    When will the eForms schematron files be available?
OP Answer: OP has not published schematron files yet. OP is still working on how to organize them. OP will try to publish them as soon as possible and hopes that during 2021, it will be able to make at least a first version of the central validation service (CVS).

-    Comments: It's important that eSenders can start to test their rule engine.

-    A question related with UBL notices: If a notice that has been published must be cancelled (it was published by mistake), will it be possible to cancel this notice? will it be a change in the notice in UBL format? 
OP Answer: The expression “cancel a notice” is not appropriate because it seems that eSenders are deleting from the TED edition a notice that was published and this is not the case. With eForms, as today, a procedure that was published by mistake can be closed with an unsuccessful result by publishing a contract award notice. The eSenders will be able to use the eForms result notice in order to inform that in fact the competition notice that was published was closed without any winner because there was a discontinuation of the procedure. A change notice will never close a procedure because a change notice should be used only to modify some of the fields of a notice already published. This is not related to the format in the UBL, it is the regulation that it is like this and it's more or less what happens today with the discontinuation of a procedure.

-    Will OP publish the schematron rules on github or some similar platform?
OP Answer: OP is still thinking about the best way to publish them. 

-    Comments: Keep in mind that some countries are using TED forms also for below threshold procurements.

-    How about ’cancelling’ before the notice is published in TED with eForms? 
OP Answer: Of course a notice that is not yet published can be stopped and so more or less the same stop publication service that is available today will work with the eForms. The difference is that today OP publishes within five days, with eForms OP would like to publish in much less time so the contracting authority will have less time to launch this stop publication process.The contracting authority can of course stop the publication of a submitted notice provided that the notice is not in a “blocking status” meaning by this any notice statuses from the moment when the notice is listed in the next edition of the OJS. This moment intervenes in the afternoon of the working day before the publication, as it already happens today.

-    Will values from lists be validated in one and only one standard way (e.g listName = LongName in the gc files)?
OP Answer: OP plan is to validate them via schematron.

-    How will OP validate CPV codes? (The CPV codes are not defined as a list at EU Vocabularies / Authority tables https://gamma.op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/authority-tables.)I  
OP Answer: In fact, they are not part of the published EU Vocabulary tables because they are managed by DG GROW. But in the end it is a list of coded values so OP will take the references as published and validate against these so it will be basically the same mechanism.

-    Are there pdf versions of the new forms available or examples how they will look to the end user? 
OP Answer: pdf rendering of the eForms are not available. The Publications Office is working on HTML files displaying how the eForms will look like. These files will be shared once they are finalized.

The future of eSentool part I: eSentool integration in eNotices2 - Mathieu GUIDON-THIESSELIN - IT Consultant - Publications Office of the European Union 

Mr GUIDON-THIESSELIN reminded the usage/advantages of the actual eSentool for eSenders (TED-Schema), before presenting the impacts of the implementation of eForms on eSentool.  TED Schema and eForms applications will be distinct, with distinct schemas, business rules and workflows. It will be risky to adapt the current applications to support both notice formats.
The future eSentool will be designed to be integrated with the new application CVS (Central Validation Service) and the input channel will be harmonized (web service only).
Finally, the advantages for eSenders of adapting the eNotices2 tool to eSenders usage in the frame of the implementation of eForm have been presented.
Further information is available in the Powerpoint presentation (see the Agenda section).

The following questions/comments were addressed:

-    Will be possible to restrict customer access e.g. to viewing notices, but not modify?
OP Answer: Yes, there are many features about the workgroups and the organizations in eNotices2. If the eSender wants to give a view to their customers, the eSenders will use the functionality of the workgroups. Therefore, there will be a workgroup grouping the contracting authority and the eSender. Within this workgroup, all the notices belonging to that specific contracting authority will be visible by any member of this workgroup. And the members of the workgroup can have different profiles. They can have a full rights profile or a restricted profile and therefore some of the members of the workgroup will be able just to have a view of the notices but not be able to edit them.

-    Will there be a webservice interface to control the contracting authority rights? 
OP Answer: Contracting authorities can create a workgroup together with the eSender and therefore in this workgroup the contracting authority will assign different profiles to each member of the workgroup. Contracting authorities can even modify the default profiles in order to decide which rights each member of the workgroup will have. So the workgroups have profiles and within the same profile you can even reduce the rights of that profile creating what is called roles.. This is not a web service. This can be done only in the user interface of the eNotices2.

The future of eSentool part II: eNotices2 machine to machine services - Bertrand LORENTZ - Publications Office of the European Union

The OP general approach for machine to machine has been explained concerning the separation from “TED Schema” / eSentool, the “training” environment, the Web services, the technology (REST, OpenAPI, JSON, XML), the compatibility guarantee, the administration and security, the access via unique central point, and the Authentication.
Then the future services available for eSenders have been presented. Services equivalent to current services will be available (submit notice for publication, search notices, get notice information, render notice in HTML or PDF, stop publication of a notice) and new services related to eForms will be implemented (get validation report for a notice, reserve notice identifier, reserve procedure identifier, convert a TED schema notice to an eForms draft notice).
As a reminder, the full presentation is available in the Agenda section.

The following questions/comments were addressed:

-    Will the training platform use the same credential management as production (e.g. to keep session) or does it provide anonymous access?
OP Answer: The training platform will also use EU Login for authentication. But it might be a different EU Login environment, so the authentication might not be shared across the 2 environments. The application session will not be shared between the production and training environment.

-    Will the PDF files be conform to the PDF/A, PDF/UA standards ?
OP Answer: The PDF files will follow the same standard as today: PDF/A.

-    Could you please remind who eSenders have to contact to stop a publication and the rules linked to this process? 
OP Answer: In the user interface of eSentool there is a button that can be used to stop the publication of a notice so the eSender can choose either the web service or the button in the user interface. 

-    Will a Stop publication service make sense since it was mentioned yesterday that notices will be published immediately ? 
OP Answer: notices will be never published instantly as in any case the single day edition will be maintained. OP will very likely shorten the publication deadline compared to the current one.

-    Is a Notice ID hardwired to a procedure ID? Or it is possible to change their associations?
OP Answer: When requesting a Notice ID, it will not be related to a procedure ID. But once the notice is submitted, then the association between the notice and the procedure it is part of will have to be consistent. 

-    Does OP provide for batch retrieval of several identifiers in advance? Could be especially useful for efficient handling of mass notices. 
OP Answer: This is something OP is thinking about, but it will have to be limited in some way, to prevent reserving too many identifiers that will then not be used.

-    Reserved Notice IDs can be submitted for publishing in a different order than the one used to reserve them? 
OP Answer: Yes. The idea is to allow reservation of identifiers at any time, so that identifiers can be used from the beginning, when starting a procurement procedure. So OP will check that the identifier has been reserved by the eSender that uses it in a notice, but OP will not require the identifiers to be used sequentially.

The future of eSentool part III: eNotices2 User Interface - Enrico CAMPANELLA - Publications Office of the European Union

Mr CAMPANELLA presented the eNotices2 web service and its advantages: 

  • More control (Single point of access for eSenders and Customers),
  • More flexibility (Access to interface and forms),
  • More teamwork (Organisations and Workgroups),
  • More interactivity (Communication and interactions between OP – eSender – Customer).

The full presentation is available in the Agenda section.

The following questions/comments were addressed:

-    There was last year talk about translation services so an eSender could submit a notice in one EU language and get returned a xml in another EU language. Is this still in the plan? 
OP Answer: There is indeed a plan to use the e-translation services but this will be before the submission. So the Contracting Authority will create a notice in one language and then will ask e-translation to translate it in several other EU languages. Then, the user has to go back to these versions to check if the translation worked properly.

-    Did OP consider storing additional rules that may be applied on-line? e.g. additional national rules to be applied for customers of some eSenders (regard to a workgroup) ?
OP Answer: It is complex/risky because OP is not informed of national rules and their modifications. OP is responsible to manage rules (more than 10000) corresponding to TED publications requirements, any other rules on top of that should be managed by the entity concerned.

-    Why isn't the form filling tool / rendering engine made available as open source? This would save member states a lot of effort and money. It would also allow for faster updates to the schema.
OP Answer: OP assessed the possibilities about whether eNotices2 could be made available as open source to facilitate everybody's work without everybody having to develop. OP has mainly an issue of time. Developments  are quite complex, the whole eForms implementation is going to take a lot of time. OP will have hopefully a system up and running to receive eForms by November 2022, but not much earlier, which, unfortunately, is incompatible with making this available for anyone else to do their own use of the eForms. OP can of course share as much information as possible and will provide regularly presentations on the system as it will go along. This is not a situation where OP can offer or make available open source solutions in time for everybody to be ready for the implementation of the regulation.

-    As a national eSender, is it possible to prevent other national users from using eNotices2 accounts - in order to make sure they do not bypass the mandatory national publication platform? Or at least be alerted if users from the same member state create an eNotices2 account? 
OP Answer: It is not something that it is foreseen for the moment. Nevertheless it could be envisaged to introduce a notification that would alert a national eSender of all the notices that are sent from a given country and do not contain the eSender service provided elements.

-    Could we embed eNotices2 in an iFrame ? 
OP Answer: OP is not going to support this and does not recommended it, and if eSenders choose to do it, it will be at their own risk.

-    Will national requirements where optional fields are made mandatory in a given country be checked by the CVS ? 
OP Answer: No, the CVS is there to check only if the rules of the eForms regulation are respected (which represents more than 10000 rules). On top of that, OP is not supposed (and able) to check all the national implementations of these rules which in any case should be more or less aligned to the eForms regulation. The only thing OP will check is that if the eNotices2 workgroup manager makes these fields mandatory then some input should be in these fields, but it is up to the manager of the workgroup. Once again, the CVS is not there to make sure that the input respects the national rules.

-    Are there already visual concepts of lot groups or duplicate information in several parts of a single notice? Example: some acceptance conditions apply equally to lots 1,3,4,5 and 8, and not only single values but whole clusters of information. 
OP Answer: OP will work on different approaches for the form filling tool and for the display of the notices which take into account the fact that unfortunately there are going to be many duplicate information. OP has an idea of how the lot distribution is going to work at the level of lots and groups of lots, but it's really very early in the development (and OP is still trying to figure out how to make it work).

-    Will the CVS service replace the XSLT ruleset entirely or will there still be a means of offline validation available?
OP Answer: CVS will replace the XSLT ruleset entirely. If eSenders need to be able to execute the validation rules themselves, we will be able to provide the Schematron rules. Those rules can be executed with a standard Schematron engine. The usual way to execute Schematron is to first transform it into XSLT, so the technology is quite similar.

-    Is it true that it will be mandatory for our Users to create an eNotices2 account to be able to send notices for publication on TED, or is it optional? 
OP Answer: The eNotices2 account for your customers is mandatory only if they want to use the eNotices2 interface. If they go through your own application, through your own interface, then they will not have to have an eNotices2 account, only the eSender does.

-    Is it planned that the wizard and form filling tool will be given to us as packages we can use? 
OP Answer: It is not foreseen at the moment, however this could be considered in future.

The new TED - Cécilia CHARLIER - Publications Office of the European Union

Ms CHARLIER explained first the reasons for creation of a new TED. (Ageing technology of the current version, need for extended search capabilities, eForms implementation, future merge of TED and SIMAP websites into a single point of reference and implementation of user and stakeholder feedback)
The new TED website will allow improvements as revamped user interface and a new search engine. Future changes have been presented in details and can be found in the Powerpoint presentation (see the Agenda section).

The following questions/comments were addressed:

-    Regarding the fact that the search results pages will be bookmarkable, will it be the search results that are bookmarked or just the search criteria? The 1st option forces the system to store the results at the moment of the search for later retrieval.
OP Answer: For search results pages, it will be the search criteria that are bookmarked. Therefore, whenever users access the bookmarked results page, the results may differ as the page will display the results matching their search criteria at that specific time.

Conclusions of the seminar - Manuela CRUZ - Publications Office of the European Union

Ms CRUZ concluded the webinar by thanking all participants and speakers for their participation, and reminding that the Publications Office remains available in case of questions.