In Italy, the Emilia-Romagna Region has achieved significant success enabling the dematerialization of public purchases for the whole procurement cycle, starting from the collection of public requirements and the achievement of digital tenders, to the fully electronic management of orders, dispatch advices and invoices.
To reach this goal, assigned to the regional Agency for the development of electronic markets ‘Intercent-ER’, Emilia-Romagna focused on a technological solution which could successfully manage a wide range of purchasing procedures and could refer to a unique standard, as widely accepted as possible. Thus, in 2008, Intercent-ER joined the PEPPOL project (Pan European Public Procurement On Line) as a founder member; a project involving several contracting authorities from 12 different countries, with the aim of developing shared technical standards and solutions for interoperability in e-procurement.
Due to the significant experience gained during the project and continued success in the test-phases that followed, Emilia-Romagna became an early adopter of the PEPPOL standards and developed an articulated strategy to fulfill a complete dematerialization of public purchases. In particular, with the regional law n. 17 of 2013, the Regional Government officially established the regional system for the dematerialization of the procurement cycle (named SiCiPa-ER), with the purpose of simplifying the public purchasing processes, reducing management costs and guaranteeing the transparency and the traceability of public expenses.
In the context of SiCiPa-ER, Intercent-ER has developed and implemented the Regional Telematic Interchange Hub (named NoTI-ER), a technological infrastructure based on European standards and freely available to all regional public administrations in order to manage the dematerialization, e-transmission and e-storage of all documents related to the procurement cycle, such as orders, dispatch advices and invoices.
Starting in 2014, widely anticipating the national deadline for the adoption of electronic invoices, the regional Health Trusts in Emilia-Romagna have been able to digitally exchange all of their invoices. Moreover, from June 2016, the same Health Trusts have also been able to send and receive orders and dispatch advices electronically, based on PEPPOL standards. To date, NoTI-ER has handled more than 100,000 e-orders, 130,000 e-dispatch advices and 1,8 million e-invoices.
Furthermore, Intercent-ER developed the first Italian PEPPOL Access Point, and has become the registration site (PEPPOL ‘SMP’) for the Emilia-Romagna Region. Intercent-ER has also defined the technical rules for using PEPPOL in relation to invoices, orders and dispatch advices, available on the Intercent-ER website at: http://intercenter.regione.emilia-romagna.it/noti-er-fatturazione-elettronica-1.