National foreword

This Published Document is the UK implementation of CEN/TS 17011‑1:2025.

The UK participation in its preparation was entrusted to Technical Committee IST/47/-/1, e-Procurement.

A list of organizations represented on this committee can be obtained on request to its committee manager.

Contractual and legal considerations

This publication has been prepared in good faith, however no representation, warranty, assurance or undertaking (express or implied) is or will be made, and no responsibility or liability is or will be accepted by BSI in relation to the adequacy, accuracy, completeness or reasonableness of this publication. All and any such responsibility and liability is expressly disclaimed to the full extent permitted by the law.

This publication is provided as is, and is to be used at the recipient’s own risk.

The recipient is advised to consider seeking professional guidance with respect to its use of this publication.

This publication is not intended to constitute a contract. Users are responsible for its correct application.

This publication is not to be regarded as a British Standard.

Compliance with a Published Document cannot confer immunity from legal obligations.

This Published Document was published under the authority of the Standards Policy and Strategy Committee on 30 November 2025.

This Technical Specification (CEN/TS) was approved by CEN on 15 September 2025 for provisional application.

The period of validity of this CEN/TS is limited initially to three years. After two years the members of CEN will be requested to submit their comments, particularly on the question whether the CEN/TS can be converted into a European Standard.

CEN members are required to announce the existence of this CEN/TS in the same way as for an EN and to make the CEN/TS available promptly at national level in an appropriate form. It is permissible to keep conflicting national standards in force (in parallel to the CEN/TS) until the final decision about the possible conversion of the CEN/TS into an EN is reached.

CEN members are the national standards bodies of Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Republic of North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Türkiye and United Kingdom.

European foreword

This document (CEN/TS 17011‑1:2025) has been prepared by Technical Committee CEN/TC 440 “Electronic Public Procurement”, the secretariat of which is held by DIN.

Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this document may be the subject of patent rights. CEN shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights.

This document is part of a series of multi-part documents prepared, or under preparation, by CEN/TC 440:

17011-series: eProcurement Architecture, providing a set of specifications outlining different aspects of the eProcurement architecture for Business Interoperability Specifications.
17014-series: eTendering Business Interoperability Specifications, providing a set of specifications outlining business choreography, transaction, syntax binding specifications and guidelines required to support the eTendering processes.
17015-series: eCatalogue Business Interoperability Specifications, providing a set of specifications outlining business choreography, transaction, syntax binding specifications and guidelines required to support the eCatalogue processes.
17016-series: eOrdering Business Interoperability Specifications, providing a set of specifications outlining business choreography, transaction, syntax binding specifications and guidelines required to support the eOrdering processes.
17017-series: eFulfilment Business Interoperability Specifications, providing a set of specifications outlining business choreography, transaction, syntax binding specifications and guidelines required to support the eDelivery processes.

The terms “shall”, “shall not”, “should”, “should not”, “may”, “need not” “can” and “cannot” are interpreted according to Annex H of the CEN-CENELEC Internal Regulations, Part 31.

Any feedback and questions on this document should be directed to the users’ national standards body. A complete listing of these bodies can be found on the CEN website.

According to the CEN-CENELEC Internal Regulations, the national standards organizations of the following countries are bound to announce this Technical Specification: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Republic of North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Türkiye and the United Kingdom.

Introduction

The objective of the work in CEN/TC 440, Electronic public procurement, is to provide standards, in the form of Business Interoperability Interface specifications, as a tool to ensure interoperability and thus facilitate efficient and effective electronic information exchange in the (public) eProcurement processes between the buyer and the seller.

This is to facilitate end-to-end eProcurement2 including both pre-award and post-award processes (see Figure 1).

eProcurement refers to the use of electronic communications and transaction processing by public sector organizations and economic operators when buying/providing supplies and services or tendering works, see Tables 1 and 2.

The aim of CEN/TC 440 is to provide a focused and coordinated approach to development of appropriate European Standards that:

build upon and complement existing initiatives, such as CEN WS/BII3 (see Annex B) and CEN/TC 434, and be part of a wider eBusiness standardization portfolio;
facilitate end-to-end eProcurement and thus support European policy objectives expressed in e.g. “Digital Agenda for Europe” [3] and “A strategy for eProcurement (COM(2012) 179 final” [4], “End-to-end eProcurement to modernise public administration (COM(2013) 453 final)” [5], the “public procurement directive” [6];
recognize the rather ambitious timeline envisaged for implementation of the new procurement directives, stressing the importance of available standards as a basis for compliant software solutions to be available in the market;
allow for user engagement and participation as well as effective production of the standards required by being focused on public procurement needs (but take generic applicability for ‘Business-to-Business’ into account as and when relevant);
facilitate improved efficiency and cost reduction in both public and private sector entities;
focus on cross-border and cross–platform interoperability to allow economic operators to select the platform of their choice and still can participate in procurement opportunities across the full European market.

The deliverables from CEN/TC 440 collectively provide a framework for interoperability in pan-European electronic transactions for eProcurement expressed as a set of technical specifications that is expected to:

allow for efficient and effective implementation of electronic exchange of documents in public eProcurement as well as in transactions between enterprises;
support implementation of end-to-end eProcurement including both pre-award and post-award processes for public procurement;
facilitate interoperability between independent solutions;
provide an added value to stakeholders, such as solution and service providers, as well as contracting bodies and economic operators involved in the eProcurement process.

The work in CEN/TC 440 focuses on interoperability aspects of the exchange of information between business partners. Back-office information processing, e.g. the internal processing and business evaluation of the actual information content, is out of scope. To ensure interoperability, the information exchange will be described in the form of:

choreography specifications, describing the flow of the business process and the sequence of information exchange;
business transaction information models, describing the information content of each information exchange;
syntax binding specifications, describing how the information content of a business transaction information model is represented in a specific syntax;
guidelines, providing additional guidance on specific topics.

For a full description of different document types, see Clause 6 of this document.

It should be noted that CEN/TC 440 deliverables do not provide the full legal framework enabling business partners to fulfil their legal obligations. It is the responsibility of the business partners themselves to ensure that the business documents exchanged respect any rules specified by relevant legislation, including requirements related to personal data protection, as well as rules stated as part of a trading relationship between them.

Use of ePO ontology

This document uses the ePO ontology, owned by the European Union, available here (https://github.com/OP-TED/ePO) and licensed under a CC BY 4.0 licence.

1 Scope

The purpose of this deliverable is to specify and describe the reference architecture applied as the basis for the development of Business Interoperability Interface specifications in the eProcurement domain by the CEN/TC 440 Technical Committee.

2 Normative references

3 Terms and definitions

4 Symbols and abbreviated terms

5 eProcurement set of interoperability specifications

5.1 General

5.2 Positioning in EIRA

6 BII Choreography specification

6.1 General

6.2 Positioning in EIRA

6.3 Specification template

7 BII transaction Specification

7.1 General

7.2 Positioning in EIRA

7.3 Specification template

8 BII syntax binding

9 Extension to EIRA

9.1 Business services

9.2 eProcurement data model

10 Semantic Data types

10.1 General

10.2 Amount. Type

10.3 Unit Price Amount. Type

10.4 Quantity. Type

10.5 Percentage. Type

10.6 Identifier. Type

10.7 Document Reference. Type

10.8 Code. Type

10.9 Date. Type

10.10 Time. Type

10.11 Text. Type

10.12 Binary Object. Type

10.13 Boolean. Type

11 eProcurement ontology

11.1 General

11.2 Bridging the discrepancy between CEN/WS BII3 business terms and ePO

12 How to claim conformance

13 Derivative use

Bibliography

PD CEN/TS 17011-1:2025

Electronic Public Procurement. Architecture - Reference Architecture Overview

Current

Published:

30 Nov 2025