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Top1. Introduction
In the past, government procurement has been used as an instrument of national policy to increase aggregate demand to stimulate economic activity, to protect domestic firms against foreign competition and to address regional disparities (Edquis,Tsipouri, Hommen,2000). The rapid growth and 24x7 availability of “Internet Technologies” has made possible radical new approaches to core business processes, not only in the private sector but also in the governmental affairs. E-government aims to reduce the distance between government authorities, organizations and citizens through information technologies and especially Internet (Basu, 2004). The potential benefits and functional capabilities of e-government, the use of information technology and web based scanning activities within the Governmental policy and perspective. It can be applied to any type of governmental affairs, such as training, provision of justice, tax control, control of budget execution and also procurement.
The increasing needs for the electronic support of Business-to-Business (B-2-B) and Business-to-Government (B-2-G) transactions have intensified the need for standardisation through the establishment of open and commonly acceptable standards and one of the areas that standards attempt to address concern that of electronic public procurement (European Communities, 2007). According to Ware et al. (2012), procurement as the four stages of project identification and design: advertising, prequalification, bid document preparation, and submission of bids; bid evaluation, post-qualification and award of contract; and contract performance, administration and supervision.
Standardisation activities in this area can contribute to the interoperable exchange of information between organisations, using the latest communication technologies. The use of standards can result in cost and time savings, as well as in the expansion to new markets. In addition, standardisation can play a significant role in building the confidence of European market players (i.e. consumers, vendors and economic operators) in e-Procurement (European Communities, 2007).
By using the Internet in the procurement process has been associated with different aspects; the prompt receipt of products, faster cycle times, reduction the maverick or unauthorized purchases, reducing costs of coordination, a closer integration of provisioning tasks with key back office systems, bureaucracy elimination, and simplification of process, lower prices and among others. Electronic procurement means to utilize new technologies and applications to create a purchase of goods and services relevant private sector which meets the requirements of various departments. E-procurement solutions streamline the buying process and facilitate more intelligent, cost effective purchasing decisions; shorter cycles times and reduce costs. To help ensure that an e-procurement solution provides the intended return on investment, the applications, servers and enterprise network infrastructure must work together seamlessly in terms of organizational culture, managerial skills, human resource management and capabilities to manage inter organizational relationships and IT infrastructure. E-procurement can be expected to reduce the discretion and personal favours decision-making process in government procurement and minimise the chances of physical contact with potential suppliers by using Internet-based technology. This can greatly contribute to the safeguarding of responsibility in the procurement process. E-procurement can also provide real time information on the different stages of the procurement process to allow potential suppliers to make informed decisions about whether to tender and how to improve the relevance of their offerings more responsive government needs and priorities. It has been suggested that if the e-procurement should be fully assimilated, it could save governments up to 5% on spending up to 50-80% on transaction costs (EU Commission, 2004).