Collaborative information system for public acquisitions

Since Romania joined the EU in 2007, significant changes have been introduced in the public procurement system. Despite the high level of centralization within the governmental system, the procurement process remains quite complex and involves numerous different institutions whose competencies are not clearly distributed. At the same time, the regulatory environment is fast-changing.

These are just the main challenges the Collaborative Information System for Public Acquisitions had to face during the developing process and consequently, the solution analysis and design had to be redone due to the legislation change.

Objective

The project’s objective is to create an efficient environment to perform public acquisitions in line with the requirements of the European Union and the legislation on public acquisitions in force, to increase public service efficiency by using modern, efficient and accessible digital tools, based on interoperability, safety and traceability paradigms.

Deliverables

• Software design
• Software solution and specifications development (SRS)
• Hardware infrastructure
• Data Center of the Agency of the Digital Agenda for Romania
• COTS licenses

The project has also consisted in the data and process migration from the old platform to the new one, while the old platform was still in operation. The services provided by the Agency of Digital Agenda for Romania are critical for the business environment, therefore their interruption would have had a huge negative impact.

Technological achievements

The implemented architecture is extremely flexible, with accessible redundancy and backup mechanisms, and is based on the latest virtualization technologies that enabled the digitalization of the processing data storage resources. The use of virtualization on cutting-edge x86 servers together with a highly performant storage solution and intelligent communication equipment are the basis for the technological environment necessary to deploy the client’s business applications.

Data security is of paramount importance considering the critical business processes and data, as well as the large number of users that access the services via public Internet networks. Our solution includes a large range of security control mechanisms: the classical ones such as VLAN isolation, IP addresses translation, firewall, IPS/IDS systems, as well as PKI-based security mechanisms or DDOS (distributed denial of service) protection against cyber attacks.

The Data Center is one of the best-equipped data centers belonging to public institutions in Romania as it observes all the recommendations of the TIER2 level. The data center is physically secured thanks to an integrated security system (access control and video surveillance).

Benefits

• Creation of a competitive environment to access public funds by implementing an acquisition management portal
• Creation of a collaborative platform to render effective the activities of all entities involved in public acquisitions
• Increase of the transparency level of the public acquisitions by using open standards
• High-security level of the information belonging to public and private institutions by using public key infrastructure
• Improvement of the employees’ professional efficiency by assuring rapid access to information
• Reduction of the administrative costs and response times to the citizens’ requests