CEN WS/BII2 1 Spreading interoperability in eProcurement processes across Europe Open Seminar Brussels December 6, 2012

CEN WS/BII2 Welcome and introduction Stuart Feder, CEN WS/BII2 Chair 2

CEN WS/BII2 3 Thanks so very much to everyone for coming to this open seminar concerning business interoperability interfaces for public procurement in Europe. It is – for the moment at least - the final event of the European committee for standardization’s workshop on this theme. We are, of course, most likely to be familiar to you all as simply: CEN WS/BII2. Let me also mention at the outset that we are most fortunate to have a number of distinguished speakers and panelists who have kindly agreed to join us today and we are most grateful for their participation. They will be providing important perspectives on the issues being taken up on today’s program: from the standpoints of the European commission, from the user community and also from the international standards community.

CEN WS/BII2 You will, of course, also be hearing a good deal from our team leaders about their work during phase 2 of BII and from our vice chairs about a proposed continuation of these efforts as phase 3. Phase 2 started in May 2010 (32 months ago) and, as can often be the case, some of that time we had to go forward rather steadily and patiently step-by-step as we awaited funding processes to be completed. Most importantly, in the end, we believe we have over the past many months done what we set out to do and have done it on a reasonably timely basis. These achievements are entirely due to the considerable competencies and effectiveness of the members of the BII2 team – working as a team – under the guidance of their project leaders and the vice chairs. So as chair, let me take this opportunity to offer my congratulations for their efforts and I would ask you all to please join me in a round of applause for the “BII2 team”. 4

CEN WS/BII2 Gaining consensus on common approaches for regional developments is a considerable challenge in its own right – no matter what the theme – and it is something essential in the European context in terms of fostering the concept of a single market. The tasks have been performed in a way that should make it easy to be contributed to efforts in an international context - so that requirements and solutions can evolve to benefit those with these requirements around the world (making it also easier to interface with European requirements). Moreover, it also enables input to be brought back to Europe from the global standards community, which may then be given consideration in due course for Europe. 5

CEN WS/BII2 One thing one learns in standards work is that requirements are always changing (sometimes a little and sometimes a lot, for example, within a country or a region or a business domain) and that the way to achieve solutions is also ever-changing. But one thing that is likely to be increasingly stable is the set of re-usable core semantics and re-usable core models. Moreover, capturing these changes and alternative developments – most likely in terms of implementation guidelines and self-conformance statements, in a central place (or registry) may be a good way to foster greater transparency about how things are evolving and how they might serve as alternative approaches on the road to possibly greater efficiency in meeting stakeholder requirements. We’ll come back to this theme a bit later in the day. So for now, let me thank you again for joining us and let me turn over the floor to vice chair Jostein Frømyr who will be taking things forward until later this afternoon. Thank you. 6