Procurement, small municipalities (Asmel) against Anac: “There is still chaos in digital tenders”

The new season of digital public procurement, which started in January, has a legacy of controversy. They are now the small municipalities represented by Asmel to take it out onNational Anti-Corruption Authority (Anac). The accusation: Anac’s new rules are slowing down public procurement; furthermore, the Authority would unfairly persecute small municipalities belonging to Asmel – which groups together 4 thousand – with the threat of fines of up to 5 thousand euros, for alleged violations of the new digital rules.

Anac responds that “the digitalisation of procurement in Italy works” and that it is correctly monitoring municipalities that violate the rules.

A tiring revolution

It can be said that the revolution that started in January continues to be counterattacked by some contracting entities, even if the real chaos of the first weeks seems to be behind us.

You have to know that from January 1st the regulation on the digitalisation of the entire cycle of public contracts has come into force. Now PAs that call for tenders can only do so via certified digital procurement platforms (Pac). As Anac explained, “this provision is functional to guarantee, by the national database of public contracts, a series of services such as legal advertising and the transparency of tender documents”, “allowing the real-time transmission of the necessary information as well as the possibility of making full use of the economic operator’s virtual file for the planned checks”.

An entity can therefore now only use certified platforms, i.e. the Mepa of Consip (ministry of economy and finance), a Region or the platform of a private operator. However, by the deadline of January 1st, many municipal suppliers had not yet been certified and the Mepa platform had usability problems. Result: chaos between entities and severe delays in tenders.

The extension to September

So that Anac has granted a partial extension: until September 2024, contracts up to 5 thousand euros can use the old, more streamlined procedures. We are undoubtedly in a transition phase, which according to Asmel is slowing down the machinery of the Municipalities.

“Digitalisation has had a very bumpy start. Serious anomalies have emerged in IT platforms. So ‘blocking’ that Anac, while waiting to remedy it, has invited the contracting authorities to ‘derogate’ from the same rules established by the Code”, we read in an open letter from Asmel to Anac and signed by 300 Municipalities.

“An unprecedented and paradoxical solution. Anac returns to be vigilant, but invites the police to turn a blind eye. A turning point that has gone into the background given the urgency of overcoming the current stalemate phase as soon as possible which, in the first two months of 2024, led to a collapse of 43.5% in the number of tenders and 70.5% in the amounts ( CRESME data)”.

Asmel then cites the case of a municipality (not named) which according to him Anac is persecuting with checks regarding a tender notice.

Anac responds, in a note sent to Republic: “In three months of activity, over one million one hundred thousand procedures for the awarding of public contracts worth approximately 78 billion euros were launched through the digital platform.”

Anac disputes Asmel’s numbers according to which there would have been a decline in races: “Only in the first month it was there, physiologically with digitalisation, but it was largely recovered in the following months”, he explains to Republic. “Anac is actively alongside public administrations on a daily basis, to help and support them in this historic step for our country, which is the digitalisation of procurement, bringing Italy fully to a European level”.

“In its supervisory activity, established by law, Anac verifies that public administrations carry out the task to which they are called as best as possible, requesting information if necessary, and highlighting critical issues, if there are any”.

“The case raised by Asmel – which in the past has been unsuccessful in court on several occasions against the Authority – concerns exactly this: a contracting authority that conducted tender procedures exceeding the qualification thresholds, despite not being qualified to do so. Furthermore, you used unjustified derogatory hypotheses, and various further illegitimacies were found against you.” And again: “Any sanctions that may be imposed on the individual contracting authority are a guarantee of the entire system and the protection of the thousands of contracting authorities which, on the contrary, have acted correctly and in full compliance with the law, making the most of the opportunities provided to them from the digitalisation process”.

“The Anti-Corruption Authority will continue – concludes the note – to work alongside the many public administrations seriously engaged in the process of digitizing procurement, especially small municipalities, also through the publication of standard tenders and logistical support through the Anac platform” .