SMEs threatened by online procurement

BASDA, the Business Application Software Developers' Association, has been working closely with the OGC and other Government Departments to define a simple eProcurement Standard. Unfortunately many Councils and other Government departments ignore this work and do-their-own-thing! - often influenced by ‘proprietary standards’.

The result is exactly what the article suggests; the larger organisations with a configurable XML interface can link to any 'proprietary' standard, but SME's cannot.

BASDA members developed eBIS-XML - the only truly 'open-standard' for eProcurement. It is the only eGIF (Government Interoperability Standard) for eProcurement and adopted by the vast majority of our 200 members - including Agresso, Sage, Microsoft and SAP.

It is recommended by the OGC (Office of Government Commerce) but still local councils continue to use ‘proprietary standards’ like CXML which cannot link to our members' systems.

The BASDA eBIS-XML standard is already embedded in the majority of SME systems like Sage Line 50 - low-cost upgrades are available to existing users at a fraction of the cost of setting up these 'proprietary' XML interfaces - yet the Government and Local Councils continue to do their own thing - no wonder they don't get any take-up!

I thought eGovernment was supposed to make life easier – it is for the large corporate – but the SME is certainly disadvantaged!

Dennis Keeling, Chief Executive, BASDA