20.04.2018
In 2017, cosinex got the contract for a consulting project by the EU Commission to revise the CPV Code. The CPV classification standard represents a common vocabulary into which public authorities have to group announcements within the framework of tenders. The aim of the consulting project for the Commission was in particular to prepare an expert opinion based on the work results of the expert group with regard to a revision of the common vocabulary for public contracts (CPV). The report has meanwhile been published on the EU Commission's website.
The international working group on the CPV Code consisted of representatives of the administration, research, private service providers and the EU Commission itself. All of these participants had one thing in common: special expertise in the field of public procurement or experience in the (further) development of international classification standards.
The report was prepared on the basis of the methodology for so-called Impact Assessments, which provides a fixed structure for a step-by-step analytical approach, including an analysis of the problems, triggers, consequences, objectives of the project and various solution variants. As a result, the Commission received four proposals for the revision of the CPV Code.
All proposed solutions were evaluated by the group of experts and assessed in terms of their effectiveness (in terms of achieving the objectives set) and performance (in terms of cost). The possible revision of the CPV code focused not only on the structure (taxonomy and ontology) and methodology of the structure as well as the linguistic quality of the nomenclature, but also on improving usability through supporting tools and instruments (see also www.cpvcode.eu)), which should enable the user to search even more specifically for appropriate CPV codes. Functions such as the display of the official EU explanations - which provide information on which CPV codes cannot be found in a specific class or where they are located - as well as synonyms can support the search for the correct CPV code.
In the GovTech Group this project has a special significance: "We were very much looking forward to the challenges due to the fact that the topic “CPV code“ has been with us for many years. As part of a cosinex research project as well as some scientific work and publications, we have been dealing with the CPV code for three years now and are endeavouring to support modern approaches to further improve the usability of the nomenclature," explains Dr. Antanina Kuljanin, consultant to the management and project manager of the consulting project.