Cloud for Europe launches tender for Public Sector Cloud innovation

The Cloud for Europe Joint PCP is inviting suppliers to bid for any or all of three services (lots), each of which provides a framework contract for the realisation of research and development services. The lots comprise innovative solutions for federated certified service brokerage, secure legislation-aware storage and legislation execution. The work will be carried out in three distinct competitive phases over 18 months. The process phases are related to the solution design (phase 1), prototype development (phase 2) and the original development of a limited number of first products or services in the form of a test series (phase 3). For each lot, several bids will be awarded a framework contract. After each phase, results will be evaluated and bids will compete with each other for assignments in the subsequent phase.

The main contact point for the tendering process is the lead procurer in the Cloud for Europe project – Agenzia per l’Italia Digitale (Italy), acting on behalf of the project’s other procurement partners – Ministerie van Financiën Directoraat-generaal Belastingdienst (the Netherlands), Entidade de Serviços Partilhados da Administração Pública (Portugal), The National Institute for Research & Development in Informatics - Ministry for Information Society (Romania), and Ministry of Finance of the Slovak Republic (Slovakia).

Mauro Draoli, Agenzia per l’Italia Digitale, said, “This announcement marks the beginning of a significant opportunity for potential procurers and suppliers to learn from the experience of the Cloud for Europe project in enabling the procurement of cloud computing services by European public administrations.”

The total budget available for the contract awards is four million euro. The deadline for submission is 20 February 2015.