The Swedish National Financial Management Authority are recommending the use of PEPPOL infrastructure and message formats being used in future procurement and finance operations to and from public sector.
The PEPPOL structure is aimed at cross border business and cross border transactions being sent. It can be used – as it is to some extent – to force operators to unify business models where the about 350 or so operators in Europe today have different ways of charging buyer and supplier transactions being sent which is quite hard for an end user to handle and create a business case increasing electronic transactions. It can also be used to try and unify the framework, formats and content enabling businesses to speak the same “language”. A challenge.
There are many lessons to be learned from Norway. In Norway the decision was to enforce access points as “mail boxes” – not validating nor being allowed to validate what was either sent nor received in the mail box. Which is a challenge since businesses rely on invoices to be paid and want to be sure invoices have been received (or just as well send a paper invoice). This has been resolved to some extent now.
Taken from PEPPOL.eu The SFTI board of directors is recommending use of the PEPPOL infrastructure for e-procurement in the post-award phase. The PEPPOL infrastructure will facilitate the exchange of electronic messages between large groups of suppliers and contracting authorities in Sweden.
Single Face To Industry (SFTI) is a joint initiative in the Swedish public sector to promote and facilitate e-procurement. SFTI had previously decided to use PEPPOL as the messaging standard for documents like electronic catalogue, purchase order and invoice which are united under the concept of Svehandel. SFTI has recently decided to also recommend the use of the PEPPOL network for electronic procurement, which enables connected buyers and suppliers to easily communicate with each other.
– I am very pleased to hear that SFTI now recommends the PEPPOL infrastructure as it will create more attraction in Sweden for joining PEPPOL. Another positive fact is that the suppliers of government framework agreement for e-procurement, concluded by the Swedish National Financial Management Authority (ESV), now will connect to PEPPOL for those authorities, who have called off, on the actual framework agreement, says Sören Pedersen, project manager at ESV responsible for PEPPOL in Sweden.
In this interview Sören Pedersen tell about the meaning of the recommendation and what public and private sector should expect to happen.