The national electronic tendering platform eTenders switched to a new service provider in May 2023, marking the first time in a decade that the system had changed to a new provider.

The national electronic tendering website eTenders switched to a new service provider in May 2023, marking the first time in a decade that the website had changed to a new provider.

While eTenders was never intended to be used for long-term record keeping, for some public buyers, the old eTenders website may have been used as part of their approach to meeting their record keeping and data retention obligations. However, the national public procurement guidelines clearly state that “eTenders should not be used as a storage facility and that all relevant documentation records should be maintained off the platform by the contracting authority”. On that basis, and due to scale, complexity and associated risks to data integrity, past procurement competition data could not be transferred from the old eTenders website to the current eTenders website

To facilitate access to past procurement data during this changeover period since May 2023, the previous eTenders website has remained online and accessible to buyers and suppliers. However, access to the old site will end for all users in May 2024, and the OGP is encouraging public procurement buyers to take action now to make sure they retrieve the procurement competition data required from the old website in advance of this date.

Any data associated with past procurement competitions that was published on the old website will be affected. In the majority of cases, this will mean any procurement competition that was published before 15 May 2023 (before the launch of the current eTenders website).