Position Paper: EU guidelines on public procurement of cloud services
Published by: AmCham EU
The AmCham EU has published a position paper on EU guidelines on public procurement of cloud services.
The informal Member State Cloud Cooperation Group (MSCCG), established under the European Alliance for Industrial Data, Edge and Cloud, is developing guidelines on public procurement of cloud computing services (Guidelines). Unfortunately, the work of this group has been characterised with a lack of transparency and industry engagement. To ensure that the Guidelines are realistic and implementable, we encourage authorities to engage in open dialogues with cloud providers before they are finalised. Learn how the European Commission can establish a resilient public procurement framework that
Unfortunately, the work of this group has been characterised for a lack of transparency and industry engagement, raising concerns about the impact that these Guidelines would have on the adoption and boost of new technologies in the EU. To ensure the forthcoming Guidelines are practicably implementable, we encourage authorities to engage in an open dialogue with cloud providers before they are finalised and published. Concretely, the European Commission should submit the Guidelines to a wide public consultation, open not only to all types of cloud providers, but also to all EU and national administrations and public agencies that use cloud services, to gather the widest possible feedback.
Against this background, this paper introduces our recommendations on what we believe are best practices and necessary components of a forward-looking and future-proof public procurement framework that fosters the adoption of cloud computing by the public sector, including our views around privacy and security, sovereignty, sustainability and energy efficiency, requirements and skills among others.