Virtual Company Dossiers are standardized digital data packages used to prove qualification criteria of an economic operator in the procurement and contracting process. This is a major step towards pan-European public ePprocurement, electronic data submission and interoperable data exchange which are main objectives of the Large Scale Pilot Pan-European Public Procurement Online (PEPPOL). The Austrian Federal Ministry of Finances (BMF) received the real-case VCD packages that have been created using the Austrian PEPPOL VCD system and the central European PEPPOL VCD system. Both systems have been developed by the beneficiary PEPPOL.AT as an implementation of PEPPOL specifications based on semantic technologies and the m2n Intelligence Management Framework.

"We are happy to be the first beneficiary having executed this type of real pilot case using PEPPOL technology", says Dr. Gerhard Popp, Head of PEPPOL.AT and Head of IT and Public Relations in the Austrian Federal Ministry of Finance. "Especially in the context of cross-border tenders we expect to gain confidence in the comparability of suitability evidences received from different countries when using the VCD in such cases", he adds.

"Providing evidences as part of an offer, using the Austrian PEPPOL VCD system gives you the security of delivering current information to the contracting authority's request. Furthermore it saved time to retrieve the evidence - like the business register certificate - as the Austrian PEPPOL VCD system has an online interface to common evidence issuing services", states Wolfgang Schneider, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of one of the consulting companies that created one of the VCD packages.

"More issuing services will be integrated with the Austrian PEPPOL VCD system during the next 12 months", mentions Silke Weiß, VCD Project Manager of PEPPOL.AT.

André Hoddevik, Project Director of PEPPOL, congratulated the Austrian Ministry of Finance and the two consulting companies involved in the project on having conducted these first real life VCD cases. "Use of the PEPPOL VCD solutions makes it easier to validate the received evidence - in form of an interoperable electronic VCD package - with regard to the requested criteria of a contracting authority.With this milestone reached and the first invoices transmitted through the PEPPOL infrastructure, we have taken important steps towards building the PEPPOL community" concludes Mr. Hoddevik.

The Austrian Federal Ministry of Finances is one of three partners in the Austrian PEPPOL beneficiary consortium PEPPOL.AT and also acts as pilot participant for VCD and eInvoicing pilot cases.

The Austrian Federal Computing Centre (BRZ) is also a beneficiary of PEPPOL.AT. The BRZ operates the PEPPOL European VCD System, the PEPPOL Austrian VCD System and also the PEPPOL post-award infrastructure.

The main technical components and key specifications used for enabling the following transactions are:

• Creation of the VCDs

- PEPPOL European VCD system

- PEPPOL Austrian VCD system

• Support of VCD creation process and document content

- PEPPOL WP2 VCD ontology

- PEPPOL WP2 VCD schema v1.0

- PEPPOL WP2 VCD package schema v1.0

- OASIS Universal Business Language 2.0 xml-syntax

The Austrian PEPPOL VCD system is able to select and call the (IT-)services providing the needed data, efficiently orchestrate the necessary processes, collect the results and pack it into a VCD package following an internationally agreed upon semantic schema. In order to comply with the overall requirements of the international scope, the VCD system not only has to handle pan-European interoperability issues but has to show high flexibility concerning changes in the international technical and legal framework as well as in the national derivation of the underlying rule set.

Further Information:

• Original news article - PEPPOL website
• Information on the PEPPOL VCD system (in German)