Euroalert.net - EN

Euroalert iCal: Public holidays in the EU and in the European institutions for free on your mobile phone

2013-02-21T18:28:00.002+01:00

In 2012, Euroalert published for the first time the information on the public holidays in the EU member states. This information is based on the national holidays calendar published annually in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) with data provided by the countries themselves.

This time Euroalert goes further by adding more data to this calendar, and by offering the possibility to get also for free the calendar with the public holidays in European institutions. This information is published in the OJEU in a format (PDF format) that is not useful either for businesses or citizens. For example, a SME that wants to expand its market to other European Union country will be interested to know in a fast and simple way, the public holidays in each EU country. On the other hand, European citizens that organize a vacation travel within the EU would also be interested in knowing in advance if their scheduled days coincide with a public holiday.

These are the reasons for the launching one year more an iCalendar format with the public holidays with an added bonus on this edition. The calendar containing the national holidays EU member states, it has been added the public holidays from the countries that also belong to the European Economic Area (EEA) and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), namely Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. You can add as an iCalendar format, a format that is available for example from Google Calendar or from many other calendar applications developed for SmartPhones, tablets or computers, the public holiday's calendar of the European institutions. This calendar contains the days that the EU institutions (Council, Commission, European Parliament, European Central Bank, etc..) are closed to the public in 2013 and in 2014.

In order to enjoy this calendar of public holidays in the EU, you only have to download it from Euroalert and, if you have any further question, you can contact us by email or via our Twitter profile and through the Euroalert Facebook page.

Beware, one train can hide another (or the importance of choosing the right CPV)

2013-02-11T08:48:00.003+01:00

One of the things we do at Euroalert is making sure that the Competitive Intelligence products and services based on public procurement that we provide for our subscribers are of the highest quality. Much beyond than enhancing their technical features or aggregating new sources of data, Euroalert Team works with our clients to ensure that they get the information about public contracts that really affects their businesses.

One of the most important ingredients to achieve that is to make a good tender profile and choose the right CPV codes which are used in public procurement in the EU. If the codes are accurately identified, then the public procurement widgets implemented by our subscribers in their websites will show the contracts in the sectors and countries that really interest their users. In the same way, choosing the right CPV codes when building up a profile to set an alert on public procurement and government contracts in 10ders Alerts, is really important so that the subscriber gets the right alerts in the mail-box.

It seems easy, but this process can sometimes be a tricky one. Not only the CPV code list contains more than 9 000 codes and turns the process of choosing the right one into a digging experience, but one can also be tempted in some occasions by the first results of the search which are maybe not the right ones. It may happen like in the old railway road-crossings where “one train can hide another”, and a title of a contract which is apparently irrelevant for a business really “hides” one which is really interesting.

It also happens that sometimes the names of the CPV can be somehow misleading. Not leaving the railway environment, we recently found a funny example when solving a query from one of our subscribers. Why does a tender about “disposable non-chemical medical consumables and haematological consumables” in Poland appears in a search about rail transport? Easy, it seems that in publishing the tender someone may have mixed the code for “sleepers” with the one for “sleeping pills”.

With Euroalert you can always rely on the advice of our Team to solve these details and build up the profile which better fits into your needs. This will help you to get the most out of the widgets to publish tenders, the alerts on public procurement, the successful bidders lists or the product reports on public procurement.

Euroalert participated at the Open Government Conference 'Committed to the future', and wishes you Merry Christmas

2012-12-20T19:23:00.002+01:00

José Luis Marín, Euroalert's CEO, attended as speaker to the Conference on Open Government "Committed to the future", organized by the Club of Innovation in collaboration with the Spanish Ministry of Finance and Public Administration, and held on 18 December. During the event, we had the opportunity to show how important is for companies the 'Open Government', and especially, the opening of data by governments to carry out projects like Euroalert. Also, we presented our experience in this field and specifically focused in the use of open data in public procurement to generate products and services that provide an added value to SMEs and other organisations.

Euroalert, una compañía open data from euroalert

The Conference also was a networking event which brought together companies which re-use the information, associations and foundations working on transparency and open government, universities and governments. They all shared experiences and best practices, especially, among all types of public administrations (local and regional governments, including the Spanish Congress of Deputies) to implement in practice the 'Open Government'. Guzmán Garmendia, expert and responsible of the Open Government legislation from the Government of Navarra, stressed that "citizen participation can not be confused with social networks" and advised the governments "to believe on it first to build the Open Government from the bottom to up".

Rafa Rubio, professor at the Complutense University of Madrid, reminded to the governments that they may count on experts from the universities to launch Open Government projects. At the Conference, we could see examples of regional and local governments that have created portals to improve transparency. First we had the opportunity to listen to Marta Lopez Cuesta, who explained how the new Open Government portal of the Castilla y León Region was build and which consists of, and then, several representatives of the Basque Government presented Irekia, the Basque Government portal, which it is a model to follow for many of the other Spanish public administrations.

There was also time to listen to associations and foundations, including the Fundación CIVIO and Access Info Europe, who explained the importance of the 'Open Government' to improve transparency and citizen participation, and also the importance of open data for the "data journalism" for, as Mar Cabra explained at her presentation, “to convert the opened data into fundamental news to get better informed citizens".

We want to enjoy this occasion to wish all of you happy holidays and propose you to think about the importance of the 'Open Government' for citizens and companies during the Christmas period. Euroalert's team wishes you Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Euroalert shows in MATELEC how to find new business opportunities thanks to commercial intelligence and public procurement

2012-11-16T14:08:00.000+01:00

A few days ago our colleague Mai Rodríguez attended the International Trade Fair for the Electrical and Electronics Industry MATELEC. The event gathered in Madrid more than 40.000 professionals of the sector coming from more than 80 different countries.

In this occasion, in addition to meeting some Euroalert partners ans clients, we also took part in the fair celebrating a technical seminar where we showed how it is possible to exploit the information included in public contracts in order to access new business opportunities. For that reason we entitled the seminar “How to created more business opportunities?” Lear to use competitive intelligence tools and techniques in public procurement”.

Whenever we have the opportunity to share these kind of seminars with companies of any size or coming from whatever sector, participants' reactions are quite the same: “is it really possible to extract that information?”, “tracking all that amount of data and putting all of them in order would take hours... days!”. These are the reactions brought by Euroalert commercial tools.

Some of the possibilities that Commercial Intelligence tools in public procurement can bring are, e.g., having tender alerting services which really adapt to one's needs and allow personal management of the profile or getting lists with companies that have been awarded public contracts to get new customers of find new partners. These are some of the features that are worth exploring in order to enhance a commercial strategy or give support to internationalization resources.

You can find here the presentation Mai used in the seminar about how to explore new business opportunities thanks to public procurement information. If you were not in Matelec or could not attend the seminar, or if you wish to have the information in English, you can e-mail us to TenderAlerts@euroalert.net or contact us through Euroalert Twitter profile or in Facebook and we will give you all the information you need.

¿How to create more business opportunities? Learn to use competitive intelligence tools and techniques in public procurement (Spanish version) from euroalert

Euroalert makes up a very special services package for Europe Direct info points

2012-08-10T13:56:00.003+02:00

Despite being in Agust it may seem that everybody is on holidays or just coming back from them, activity never stops.

A few weeks ago Euroalert published in its website the Call for proposals to select the host structures of the Europe Direct information centres for the period 2013-2017. These centres are without any doubt key players in the task of bringing the EU closer to citizens and providing information about the EU which is directly related to practical aspects of everyday life.

As you will certainly know, in addition to providing services that allow to track information with customized EU Newsletters or tender alerting services, Euroalert also provides a range of services that enable organizations of all types to disseminate EU contents tailored to the interests of their users. Especially considering the needs of the Europe Direct centres, we have put together a service package to help Europe Directs to disseminate News and European grants in an easy and automatic way.

The Euroalert package for Europe Directs includes the One Web Full Content widgets to display EU News and Grants which are very easy to implement and once installed are automatically updated with no need for further management. The contents can be adapted to any web layout, filtered by area and displayed in the best way for users. They can also be shared social media completing the on-line communications activities.

If you belong to a Europe Direct centre or to an institution willing to take part in the call to host a centre in the coming years, you can download here the brochure of the Euroalert package for Europe Direct and check some Euroalert experiences with Europe Direct centres in our portfolio. The package is especially designed to give the best results at minimum cost.

To know more about the Euroalert special package for Europe Direct you can call us at +32 2 318 03 01 or reach through any of these contacts. And, of course... all Euroalert Team wishes you many luck with your proposals!

Euroalert takes part at the UIMP Summer School as a company active in re-using public information

2012-07-10T17:11:00.000+02:00

Over June 21st and 22nd we had the occasion to take part in one of the round tables of the Course on Open government and transparency in the knowledge society organized by Fundación Telefónica as part of the Summer School that the Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo holds every year in Santander. This was with any doubt a unique venue to discuss about one of the issues we are really passionate about and to share all the challenges faced by Euroalert as an 'open data company' which uses public sector data in order to create value services for SMEs in all Europe.

After the opening conference which highlighted the decisive changes prompted by technology on the capacity citizens have nowadays to take active part in the activities carried out by public sector, the first panel of the course focused on a revision of the concepts of transparency and open government. Panellists reviewed the current situation of the proposal for a Spanish Law on Transparency, Access to Public Information and Good Governance, its virtues and weaknesses, and forecasted that this law should probably be approved by the beginning of year 2013. It was also underlined how transparency in public sector's activity is crucial to support the credibility and confidence required in order to boost economic growth, as well as the importance of citizens' involvement in generating such process of transparency.

The last session left the floor to the discussion about the potential wealth creation lying on the re-use of public sector data. This panel where Euroalert had the pleasure to take part, highlighted the role played by the analysis of data related to public sector activity as a tool to improve its own efficiency and policy assessment. As an open data company, Euroalert had the opportunity to present its own case as a company using data held by public administrations and bodies in order to create services such as alerts of government contracts published by public administrations in all the EU, lists of successful bidders in EU public procurement or market reports based of public procurement data which help companies of all types to access new business opportunities and make their businesses grow.

By closing the first day of the course, Euroalert acted as a link for a second day which was more focused on the technical aspects of Open Data. The need to open up as many sources of data as possible, the challenge to aggregate data in projects such as the one carried out by Euroalert to create the first pan-European public procurement platform, the importance of data contextualization and the difficulties lying in their management, storage and linkage, were some of the issues pointed out during this session which are all faced by Euroalert every day in order to bring you better and better services to help you in your activities and businesses.

The course ended up by setting a roadmap for open government and by highlighting the fact that, whilst the success of this process for openness will strongly depend on the willingness of all those who are involved in it, it is with no doubt an opportunity for improvement and growth especially in difficult times.

You can download here the programme of the Course on open government and transparency in the knowledge society. We also share here the presentation we used in the Course (Spanish version only).

Aggregating public contracts data to generate information and value services for SMEs

See more Euroalert presentations

Euroalert brings you the latest European funding opportunities

2012-06-27T11:57:00.001+02:00

The European Union regularly publishes grants through its institutions, bodies and agencies addressed to all audiences and stakeholders such as NGOs, SMEs, universities or government agencies. You only need to find them... on time!

Euroalert makes easy this task by publishing grants, i.e., the calls for proposals to apply for funding opportunities that count with European funds, and offers a personalized service to filter to get only what you are looking for. We can already say that you will find gathered in Euroalert these grants in all topics before than anywhere else.

The task may seem simple, but it is not. Not all EU grants are published in the Official Journal of the EU (OJEU). Nor all the information is published in more than one language, even the most basic information. For free, Euroalert provides grants that are published in the OJEU and whose most basic information is usually published in all 23 official EU languages. You can directly access to the latest grants published in OJEU through the Euroalert's calls for proposals website, to subscribe to the free weekly newsletter or to install the free widget onto websites and blogs, all for free and without further obligation.

But as we said, not all EU grants are published in the OJEU. Euroalert customizes the search by offering even more, both in number of grants by topic and in ways to access information that may interest you the most. An example of a grant which has not been published in OJEU, which is by the way very interesting nowadays, is "Erasmus for young entrepreneurs". The European Commission through its Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme annually publishes this grant that can help many entrepreneurs. Euroalert provides key information relating to this call in English. To keep track of this opportunity and many others not published in the OJEU, you can try for ten days, with no-obligation, the Customized Newsletter on EU information. This newsletter sends you directly to your e-mail only the most relevant information and by applying the delivery options, only when you need it.

Of course, Euroalert also proposes to provide this service in the form of “payment widget”, so you can use more advanced content as already do many institutions and companies. You can customize it to your needs and those of your users and customers in order to allow them to get information on grant opportunities in the most useful way possible. If you want to learn more about this service and the ones referred above, or any other offered by Euroalert, you can call +32 2 318 03 01 or use any of these forms of contact. As you see, Euroalert makes easier to find the funding opportunities that best fit your needs.

Euroalert presents its Social Media Newsroom

2012-06-01T10:54:00.002+02:00

In order to make the cooperation with press, media and others interested parties easier, Euroalert has created a Social Media Newsroom with specific material published. In this section of our website, we provide you a Press Kit for Media, different ways to contact us and, among other interesting things, the social media that we use to communicate our services of information about the European Union and our competitive intelligence products on public tenders. In addition to this, we also provide you a sample of our past participation in different media.

A few months ago, Euroalert presented its extension into the Google+ circles. This network is one of the ways to contact us to know more aboutour products and to potential collaborations. Other social networks that Eurolert commonly uses, are also included in our Social Media Newsroom.

Euroalert is open to all kinds of collaborations with the media and other stakeholders. For example, did you know that Euroalert provides EU breaking news through a widget? We offer this personalized service for only €30 a month. For this service and many others that may be of your interest, you can phone us +32 2 318 03 01 or use our Contact page. We hope our Social Media Newsroom is useful for you and we thank you in advance to help us to improve it.

Euroalert analyses with exporting companies how to get the most from competitive intelligence tools based on public procurement

2012-05-22T12:54:00.000+02:00

As you already know Euroalert provides competitive intelligence tools based on public procurement information which help companies from all sectors to access new business opportunities. Being in contact with companies and sharing with them our experience in the management of these type of tools is without any doubt one of the most satisfying parts of our job. It is for that reason that since Euroalert was invited to be in the panel of a seminar about public procurement opportunities for Irish construction companies organised by Enterprise Ireland a couple of years ago, it is always a pleasure for us to take part in seminars and workshops whenever one of our partners invites us to talk about these opportunities with their businesses.

The last occasion was on 26 April at a seminar organised by the Spanish Association for the Internationalisation of the Electronics, Information Technology and Telecommunications Companies (Secartys). In this seminar we briefly went through the current situation of public procurement in the European Union and discussed how competitive intelligence techniques are an important contribution to any company's strategy. We also analysed how key information can be obtained from public procurement and government contract notices by using competitive intelligence tools such as Euroalert's and revised a few examples adapted to their own sector.

In Secartys' website you can access the programme of the seminar about the use of competitive intelligence tools and techniques in the field of public procurement in the European Union (Spanish version). You can also have a look here at the presentation we used during this seminar.

Herramientas de Inteligencia Competitiva y Contratación Pública: Cómo aprovechar plenamente estas oportunidades

New App to be informed of the latest news and press calls from the European Commission in Spanish

2012-05-11T09:53:00.002+02:00

Did you know that the Representation of the European Commission in Spain launched an app in collaboration with Euroalert? You can now download for iPhone and Android a mobile app where you will be able to will find the latest European news. The app lets you see the news of the European Commission, European events taking place in Spain as well as the press calls for journalists interested in covering European affairs.

In addition to this app, you can also add this information to your personalized iGoogle gadget. With the app and the gadget, the European Commission intends to make available its activities in Spain to the public and provide to Spanish citizens a quick and easy access to European information. Francisco Fonseca, head of the Representation of the European Commission in Spain highlighted at the moment of the launching last November, that in this way, citizens will get European information without having to actively search through the new uses that are being imposed.

Euroalert team is very proud to have participated as a developer on this project. Also today we express our satisfaction with the number of downloads that the application is having on both iPhone and Android because it means what is useful for citizens.

As you know applications can be downloaded for free from the App Store and Google Play Market and from the website of the Representation of the European Commission in Spain and of course, from the Euroalert online store. Your comments, tweets, +1' s, likes, reviews and ratings to the app will help us to further improve its implementation, making it more useful for you all.

9 of May: Celebrate the Europe Day with Euroalert

2012-05-07T10:22:00.000+02:00

Since Robert Schuman delivered his famous 'Schuman Declaration' on 9th of May 1950, Europeans celebrated that day the Europe Day. This statement officially has started what is today known as the European Union, but back then it started the European Coal and Steel Community.

Although 9th of May is not a national holiday in any of the 27 Member States, as you can see on the calendar that we created, Representations of the European institutions such as the Representation of the European Commission in Spain, they do celebrate that day events to promote the European spirit. Among these activities, the European Commission in Spain has made available a mobile application for Android and iPhone, and with the collaboration of Euroalert, so as not to miss any detail of the celebrations and that also allows you to know the latest news related to the EU.

In Euroalert, most of the content is related to the European Union. You can access to the EU breaking news from our News section and select the specific topic that interests you. You can also install a widget on your website with this news and customize it. On the other hand, if the information you need is related to financing and business opportunities in the EU, you can check the grants issued by the European institutions and also adapt them to your web through a widget that you can customize. Regarding the business opportunities that are published in the EU, among other competitive intelligence products, we "alert you" on the public tenders relevant to your business through our alert system 10ders Alerts. We can not forget the European legislation that is published daily in the EU Official Journal (OJEU). You can also follow it in Euroalert through our newsletters. In the coming weeks, we will announce important developments in our products competitive intelligence in public tenders that surely will be very useful for you.

This is the way that Euroalert has to celebrate the 9th of May, Europe Day with you: bringing you the European information you may need and what else you might be interested. If you want more information about any of our products you can visit our online store or contact us via e-mail or via Twitter and Facebook.

Euroalert releases and shares for free the calendar on public holidays in the whole EU in 2012

2012-04-09T18:44:00.001+02:00

The European Union publishes every year in the EU Official Journal (OJEU) the national public holidays that take place in Member States with information provided by the countries themselves.

The calendar is published in a PDF format into the OJEU which is not as useful as it could for businesses or citizens. For example a SME that wants to expand its market to another EU country will surely need to know in advance, in a fast and simple way, the public holidays in each EU country. European citizens that organize a vacation travel within the EU would also be interested in knowing in advance if their scheduled days coincide with a public holiday. It is unlikely that in any of these cases, users would look for the information in the Official Journal.

For this reason in Euroalert, we have decided to transform this information into data that can be easily used or re-used, i.e. into an iCalendar that can be read from Google Calendar or from many other calendar applications developed for SmartPhones, tablets or computers. We'd like to thank you for your trust in our services and that's why we have released the EU Public Holiday Calendar with a license that allows you to use it completely for free.

Euroalert.net speaks about Competitive Intelligence and Public Procurement at Bureau Veritas Business School

2012-03-26T14:52:00.001+02:00

On February 23 we had the pleasure to take part in a webinar organized by Bureau Veritas Business School and talk about Competitive Intelligence and Public Procurement. It was a great opportunity to share with all the participants Euroalert.net experience in creating value-added Competitive Intelligence services based in public procurement especially designed for SMEs active in exportation.

Over 45 minutes we went through the current situation in European public procurement market and how Competitive Intelligence techniques can be applied in order to enhance the commercial strategies of any company. It was also the case to explain how there are many tools beyond public contracts alerts, such as lists of successful bidders, which can help companies to translate a huge amount of data into useful and manageable knowledge to be used in strategic decisions.

You can watch the video of the webinar entitled “Commercial Intelligence and Public Procurement” at Bureau Veritas Business School on-line platform (this time there is only a Spanish version). You can also have a look at the presentation we used for the session.

Commercial Intelligence and Public Procurement (Spanish version)

View more presentations from Euroalert.net

There will be similar seminars and workshops over this year, where Euroalert.net Team will deal with some of the ways to take full advantage of all the information and opportunities brought by public contract announcements. If you want to keep track of all these events, you can do it through our Twitter profile and at Euroalert.net Facebook page.

Euroalert experience at the Open Government event celebrated at the EOI

2012-03-09T10:55:00.000+01:00

Last week, we had the opportunity to present our work as a company powered by open data, i.e. a company that uses data from public sector to create information services to companies across Europe. As usual, we contribute with our experience to the first #RunOgov: "Open Government: Challenge and Opportunity" event held on 28 February at the "Escuela de Organización Industrial (EOI)" organized by the "Club de Innovación" and sponsored by Telefónica.

It was a pleasure to share a very interesting day with leading people in the Spanish open data community and with others who are bursting with strength and also, to help make the community more stronger -at least, a little more. Throughout the morning, we learned that, Neelie Kroes, Vice president of the European Commission answered in her blog to the campaign for a single Open Data licence in the European Union. Of course it was something very commented among the attendees, having regard that the campaign had its origin in Spain and it is a great example of Open Government.

At the event, it was also discussed very important issues as the announcement made by the Spanish government on its works in a Spanish Digital Agenda. Given Euroalert involvement in the European Digital Agenda, we look forward to it because it should mean a boost for our digital economy. Besides, it was also relevant the announcement made by the Director General of Analysis and Planning from Castilla y Leon (Spanish region), on the upcoming launch of an Open Government strategy for this region. Within this strategy, it will be launched an Open Data portal that we hope we can use it to extend the governments contracts data, that feed our international market intelligence services.

As usual, we provide you the presentation we made at the event.

Euroalert, una compañía open data

Euroalert.net spends one day with SMEs and entrepreneurs at the “Salón Mi Empresa 2012”

2012-02-21T14:40:00.000+01:00

Last February 15 we had the opportunity to spend one day at the “Salón Mi Empresa”, My Business Exhibition, an event held in Madrid for the third consecutive year. The forum brought together experts, companies and public bodies aiming to bring solutions for the issues which most concern small businesses and entrepreneurs. As a company dedicated to develop commercial intelligence tools for SMEs based on public procurement and government contracts, knowing at first hand what these kind of businesses expect and which are their needs, is something Euroalert.net is particularly interested in.

At the exhibitors area delegates had access to solutions adapted to their businesses as well as to public institutions which can help them to launch their projects and make them grow, such as the Spanish Directorate General for SME Policy, the Spanish Institute for Foreign Trade (ICEX), the Spanish High Council of Chambers of Commerce, or Madrid Emprende Economic Development Agency, among other organizations and associations which provide help for businesses and entrepreneurs. Besides these contact points, “Salón Mi Empresa” also consisted of 6 conference rooms, where speakers from different backgrounds addressed topics such as financial aspects for entrepreneurs and small businesses, how social media can be used to increase small businesses' performance, aspects related to franchising or issues related to SMEs internationalisation process, a field where Euroalert.net is working intensively to provide quality services.

It was an intense work day which brought us an occasion to meet companies and organizations we already had the opportunity to collaborate with, as well as a good opportunity to meet new people and greet some old friends, like those from Gestiona Radio with whom Euroalert.net was happy to collaborate a couple of months ago in their programme “Esto es Europa”, This is Europe, and who were making their programme “Primera Hora”, First Hour, at the Salón Mi Empresa.

It was also quite a rewarding experience to see how, despite current difficulties, there are still people willing to start up businesses, sharing innovative ideas and with loads of optimism to move their projects forward. For all of them, Euroalert.net will keep on improving to offer the best available information services and commercial intelligence tools such as our public contracts winners lists or our tender alerts for contracts available in any EU country.

A new review of the functioning of the Common Procurement Vocabulary CPV is on track

2012-02-07T16:23:00.000+01:00

Although there is no mandatory frequency, a review of the Common Procurement Vocabulary (CPV) is made about every four years. Since the Official Journal of the EU has recently published the award of the contract for the review of the functioning of the CPV Regulation and codes, a new revision seems to be already on track. These process started back in August 2011, when the DG for the Internal Market and Services announced a contract notice to make a study on the review of the functioning of the coding currently applying to public tenders.

The Common Procurement Vocabulary published by Regulation (EC) 2195/2002 aims to provide public authorities with a common base to formulate their procurement needs and for companies to better identify business opportunities in public procurement procedures. Choosing the right codes according to the purpose of a contract notices is, indeed, one of the key elements to match both parts of the procurement process: the contracting authority and the potential bidders.

CPV codes contribute to define the object of the contract in public procurement notices, easing the purchasing process. Furthermore, this common coding system enhances the cross-border element in procurement by facilitating companies to bid for contracts in other Member states, therefore contributing to a better functioning of the EU Single Market.

The Danish company to whom the contract has been awarded will have to assess whether the current CPV coding system meets the objectives it was established for. It will also have to evaluate if these objectives are actually relevant and if they are achieved in an efficient and effective manner. The contractor will have a period of twelve months to deliver the works, while interviews, analysis, questionnaires and all the necessary evaluation processes will be performed.

Whatever the results of the study and the proposed changes to the CPV will be, Euroalert.net will be vigilant and will adapt all the services just as it was done for the 2008 CPV codes review. These commercial intelligence services based on public procurement designed for SMEs are those which allow, e.g., to track the publication of this particular tender for the review of the CPV, and to know afterwards which company has won the contract.

By the way, if you feel curious, these are the CPV codes applied to the tender for the CPV review: 79313000, 79419000, 72330000, 79330000, 72221000. Do you think they meet their objectives? If you want to know which services they describe and know a bit more about the system itself, you can always have a look at the CPV codes lists description page at Euroalert.net website.

Taking notes at The Single Market Opportunity event

2012-01-30T09:18:00.002+01:00

On January 24 we were lucky enough to attend The Single Market Opportunity event that Google organized in Brussels to discuss the opportunities that a single market presents and the barriers that still exist in the single European market. As you know, Euroalert aggregates public tenders published by the EU countries with the aim that the opportunities in public procurement of the single market can be better used by small and medium enterprises. Thus, it was very interesting to us to attend to all discussions held at the Google's event.

Of course, the discussion focused on the advances that have taken place in recent years due to the firm commitment of the European Commission for improving SMEs competitiveness through the opportunities of the Single Market. However, it was also extensively discussed the major barriers that still exist, from the tax system to heterogeneous linguistic diversity, for a European market in which nearly 500 million people live, (data from 1 January 2009) to become a reality.

It was very inspiring to see the experience of the small businesses that Google invited to the event, which share how they have taken advantage of the opportunities offered by Internet and the online marketing to internationalise their services and to access to a larger market. We are sure that it would be more and more companies using existing resources in technology and legislative developments to break down barriers and generate growth. Euroalert will keep working for helping to better enable European SMEs to improve their competitive intelligence in the Single Market with Euroalert's products such as, the Alerts on Government contracts in the European Union and the List of Government Contracts Winners in the EU.

Euroalert presents its experience at the Open Software World Conference 2012 and the W3C Day in Spain

2012-01-19T16:53:00.002+01:00

Marc Garriga at the OSWC 2012

Last week, Euroalert experienced in Granada a few intense days during the celebration of the Open Software World Conference 2012 (OSWC2012), which it is organised every year by the Andalusian Regional Government in collaboration with the CENATIC and the Regional Government of Extremadura. It was intense because we had the opportunity to present our experience on two Open Data events, held during those days with very different approaches. In both events, we explain how we collect the data that we use as raw material for our business intelligence products based on a public procurement analysis.

On January 12, Euroalert participated in the W3C Day in Spain, to which we were invited by our friends from the W3C Spain Office – office which as you know is hosted by CTIC Foundation. Following a presentation on the OpenData initiative from the Andalusian Regional Government given by Cristina Puente, Carlos de la Fuente moderated a panel discussion which was provocatively entitled as follows "PSI re-use... is there anyone there?". On this panel, we could offer our views on issues such as the Spanish Royal Decree 1495/2011, the need for a transparency regulation or PSI re-use business characterization. Additionally to the consensus reached on the need to publish much more data, the main conclusion was the need to give some further steps to consolidate the Community Open Data in Spain. Euroalert certainly tries to contribute as much as possible to this aim. On the panel, we were accompanied by Emilio Garcia, from the Finance and Public Administration Ministry, Jorge Campanillas, from Iurismatica company, Alberto Ortiz from Open Data Euskadi and María Jesús Fernández, from Open Data Zaragoza. On the hashtag #diaw3c, there is much information on what it was said there.

On the other hand, on January 13 we contribute with our experience to the debate that was proposed in the "OpenData, an opportunity for business and competitiveness" panel, organised by the OSWC2012. The panel discussion was about the business opportunities that exist concerning the re-use of public sector information. It was moderated by Guzmán Garmendia, General Director of Open Government and New Technologies department from the Government of Navarre, and it was at the discussion Jose Antonio Recio from Fundecyt, Jesus María Alonso from AtoS and Marc Garriga, from the Barcelona City Council. The debate focused around the potential of public data to generate wealth and such as Guzmán Garmendia and Marc Garriga highlighted, the importance of the joint work of public administrations that release data and companies that intend to re-use them.

Throughout the conference we had the opportunity to talk with many members of the Spanish Open Data Community, and we were very proud to participate in the meeting organised by Open Data Sevilla. We were also kindly invited to bring our vision to this newborn group of proactive citizens in the development of open data initiatives, and we enjoyed the occasion to wish them all the luck in doing this work, which will benefit everyone.

In addition to the Euroalert photo album in the OSWC 2012, we want to share with all of you as usually, both presentation that we used in the Open Software World Conference:

Adding public procurement data to create value for SMEs

and the one we used on the W3C Day in Spain:

How does Euroalert use Spanish Open Data portals?

The Euroalert Community expands to Google+

2012-01-03T20:01:00.000+01:00

In addition to wish you a happy and great 2012, we want to start sharing with you our new Euroalert's Google+ page. This page has been created to provide a new place to share our contents and for the conversation among the Euroalert Community members. If you add Euroalert page to your Google+ circles, you can make comments to the most significant contents provided by Euroalert. Of course, you can keep doing +1 to any content we publish and you liked or that have been useful for you.

Likely you are already part of one of the platforms and services that we use to enable to the Euroalert Community members a direct way to enjoy our contents. However, we will use this post to summarize all the services where you can find our contents completely for free. For example, more than 2200 users are already following Euroalert.net content concerning the European Union in both English and Spanish via Twitter. If you decide to follow Euroalert on Twitter, you will be able to find the latest news about the EU, the EU grants to finance projects and information on relevant public contracts and tenders. In other words, you will enjoy a small sample of the free contents published on the Euroalert website and included in more advanced products and services that you can find in our online store.

If you use other social networks like Facebook, Euroalert has also a page there and you can always contact us through this page, and through Euroalert page on Linkedin. Our team is available to receive your comments and suggestions through these channels in addition to other more traditional ways such as our e-mail.

On the other hand we also want to remind you about Euroalert free newsletter, that is currently being sent to several thousand people every week, and in which we inform on the most significant up to date European content, EU grants and public contracts. Besides of course this blog, which has as main objective to keep you up to date on our product enhancements and our small achievements as a company. Through Euroalert's profile on SlideShare we share materials from all the events where we participate with the aim of contributing with our experience as a company. From Euroalert albums in Picasa you can download the photos that we have taken in our visits throughout Europe and that we provide to the whole Community.

We would like to know your opinion, as we are always listening to our users in order to figure out the best ways to improve our services, so you can enjoy all the content related to the EU that we provide to the Euroalert Community. By the way, just for those who are already part of our Community, you will enjoy special offers and promotions like the one that we have just launched. Inserting the EURLRT11 code, you are able to get a discount on public contracts alerts and on the customized newsletter on European information.

New rules on thresholds applicable to EU public procurement already published

2011-12-14T11:55:00.000+01:00

Today we want to announce you a new change that will affect public procurement market in the European Union. As we already did in the past by detailing you developments such as the introduction of new CPVs in 2008 or the adaptation to the new features put in place by TED in March 2010, this time it is the matter for the changes introduced by Commission Regulation (EU) nº 1251/2011 of 30 November 2011 which modifies procurement Directives in respect to their application thresholds for the procedures for the awards of contract, and was published in the Official Journal on 2 December.

According to this Regulation, the minimum thresholds applicable to public procurement have been slightly increased. Although these changes will not be quite significant, the new figures will nevertheless have to be taken into account both by contracting authorities when launching procurement procedures, and by those companies interested in taking part in bidding processes for public contracts. The new thresholds will enter into force on 1 January 2012 and be applicable for two years.

Therefore, these new thresholds for the publication of public procurement announcements will change from 125,000 to 130,000 Euro in the case of services and supply contracts issued by central government bodies and from 193,000 to 200,000 Euro in the case of other contracting authorities. For services and supply contracts in the case of utilities and defence threshold will now pass for 387,000 to 400,000 Euro. In the case of work contracts and work concessions these figures will pass from 4,845,000 to 5,000,000 Euro.

On our side we will of course be prepared for any change which should be introduced regarding the tools and services on commercial intelligence based on public procurement that Euroalert.net provides for companies in Europe. We will make sure that you can keep on receiving tender alerts, requesting the lists of tender winners or authorities that you need, or receiving your product reports on public procurement, without being affected by these changes.

We would also like to take this occasion to remind you that if you want to keep track on new legislation published in the OJEU, Euroalert.net Customized Newsletters on EU information can certainly help you. They will allow you to keep up to date, not only about new legal developments, but also about news related to the European Union and funding opportunities for your projects. If you have any questions, you can send us an e-mail us to info@euroalert.net or contact us by any of the means described in our web.

The Representation of the European Commission in Spain launches a mobile application with the help of Euroalert.net

2011-11-21T18:48:00.001+01:00

We are very proud to inform you on our participation in a very special project. Euroalert developed for the Representation of the European Commission in Spain an app for iPhone and Android in order to see its contents on mobile devices. Now, the app has been launched!

The European Commission's news, the European events held in Spain as well as the press calls for journalists interested in covering European issues, are available now on the phone via the free application that launched the Representation of the Commission European in Spain. The new mobile application which can be downloaded from Android phones and iPhone presents the European information in a simple and accessible way. On the same project, it is also presented an iGoogle gadget with the same features thereby allowing the contents from the Representation to this format.

As stated in the official press release, Francisco Fonseca, Head of Representation agrees to this way of presenting the activities of the European Commission in Spain because "it is a basic and necessary step to communicate with citizens and for European information comes to them rather than having to search actively. It aims to facilitate access to the European issues content according to the new and current technological ways of communication. He added that the applications are free so citizens will have even easier access to information on the European Union.

Euroalert.net, which developed the app and the gadget considers that with this step "the European Commission Representation is at the forefront of public institutions in their model of relationship with citizens through the new mobile channel." In addition, we are very pleased to have been able to assist the Commission in Spain to take this step and we're very pleased with the number of downloads so far because this means that the app is useful to citizens in their day to day.

Applications can be downloaded for free from the App Store and Android Market, from the Representation of European Commission in Spain website and from the online store of Euroalert.net. Your comments, tweets, and scores on it, can contribute to improve the application, making it more useful for you all.

Euroalert experience at the Open Days 2011

2011-10-18T19:36:00.001+02:00

Once again, Euroalert has taken part at the Open Days 2011, the European week of Regions and Cities, and our experience, once again, has been very positive. The 9th edition of the Open Days has been a great success that has served to bring together experts and participants from across Europe. The 100 workshops organised with around 6000 participants were aimed at discussing many topics with a single goal, discussing how regions and cities can achieve sustainable growth and thus, help the EU out of the current crisis that we face. At the workshops, we heard ideas to achieve such goal, for example the creation of clusters with public-private funding (PPP) such as the one conducted by Castilla y León (Spain) to make real the “e-vehicle”. With this initiative, Castilla y León proposes a measure to improve the economy without forgetting the respect for the environment. In addition, many wondered at seminars how it would be possible getting out the European regions and cities of the crisis in compliance with this objective, i.e., how to create a truly sustainable economy and not just from an environmental point of view. Another idea heard at the Open Days was the creation of Euroregions, such as the Baltic Sea Euroregion or Pyrenees Mediterranean Euroregion. They consist in associations between border regions to get assistance to citizens more effectively. The associations are determined by the rule of the 150 km adopted by the European Commission, which means that partnerships can be formed only within an area of 150 km. Regional and local authorities do not agreed with this limit and asked the Commission representative during the workshop to remove such rule.

The shadow of the economic crisis has been very present throughout the week. Euroalert had the opportunity to ask the President of the Committee of the Regions herself, Mercedes Bresso, how the European Commission can help in the next budgetary period to the regions and cities at getting out of the current crisis. Ms Bresso recognized that the proposal of the Commission for the budget period 2014-2020 is quite good and defended the temporary creation of the intermediate regions concept. With the creation of this new category, she does not mean that more European funds will be granted to the regions; only an efficient way to distribute them. We thank to the president her kindness for making possible this interview.

In addition to attending a few seminars, Euroalert also had time to tweet the Open Days through the official event hashtag #euopendays, and thus, help you to watch live this great celebration of the regions and cities. Unfortunately there were not many "tweeters" telling what was happening at the Open Days, especially to find out what was being said within the workshops that we could not attend because an overlapping of the schedules. In any case, as in previous years, we thank you for your follow-up and also for the conversations we had in live via Twitter.

We hope you enjoyed our information through our news and tweets, and please, keep reading us in the coming days because Euroalert will tell you more about the topics discussed during the Open Days, such as the workshop on the future of micro-credit, the workshop on how to communicate regional policy today and after 2013 or the workshop how to perform better evaluations of structural funds expenditure by the regions.

Once again, Euroalert.net is going to be at the Open Days 2011, the most important annual event for European regions

2011-10-04T19:30:00.001+02:00

Next week, from 10 to 13 October, it is going to take place in Brussels the most important annual event for European regions and municipalities, the Open Days 2011. Of course, Euroalert is going to be there to attend as many workshops and activities as we can during those days. As we published in Euroalert last July, the week of the regions is dedicated on this occasion to 'Investing in Europe's future: Regions and cities delivering smart, sustainable and inclusive growth'. The Committee of the Regions and the European Commission, Directorate-General for Regional Policy, in partnership with regions and cities from all over Europe, are organizing this important event in which more than 6,000 professionals will share experiences, information and best practices through about 100 workshops launched for the occasion.

And of course, Euroalert is going to have an active presence in the Open Days 2011. Euroalert team is covering the event on 'live' via Twitter and also with the regular publication of news. Among the workshops to be covered, Euroalert is going to attend one in which the Committee of the Regions' initiative 'Entrepreneurial Region of Europe' and the 'Small Business Act' are going to be explained. Also Euroalert is attending to the 'Financial Instruments enhancing access to RDI for companies to achieve Europe 2020 Flagship Initiative' workshop, in order to keep informed our readers on this topic. As you know, Euroalert provides information on the latest EU call for proposals opened and EU funding instruments is a very relevant topic to the Euroalert community.

These workshops and many others will be followed on live by Euroalert team. In addition to our Twitter and news coverage, we will tell you our experience on the Open Days 2011 through this blog, as we did in October 2010 and also in October 2009. If you are taking part at the Open Days 2011 in Brussels and you want to contact us so we can attend your event or you'd like to talk about Euroalert products and services, you can always send us a direct message via Twitter or drop us an e-mail. In all the cases, we hope to provide as much information on what's happening during the Open Days 2011 as we can. And live! See you at the biggest event for regions!

10ders Alerts provides tender data in a reusable format

2011-09-14T09:01:00.000+02:00

A couple of months ago we announced you the launch of the promotional free trial period for our alerting service on public tenders: 10ders Alerts. Since then, frequent improvements have been made not only in the 10ders Alerts interface, but also in the sources of information which are aggregated in order to provide a more comprehensive database of European public contracts. We have also added new data from tender announcement such as those provided by Open Data Euskadi, and improved the criteria that can be used to describe any company's products and services in a profile that will allow them to get the most relevant information on public tenders for their activity.

Since the launch of 10ders Alerts in January 2011, hundreds of companies from almost all European Union countries and even from outside the EU, have used the free trial period to evaluate the quality of service. Thanks to their suggestions, 10ders Alerts has improved its functionality. One of the most popular requests coming from users, which is referred to 10ders Alerts, was that the data provided by the alert system should be delivered in reusable formats - an essential characteristic of our service, given the intense activity of Euroalert within the Open Data movement.

Following that request, a new feature has been released this week: the possibility for companies to obtain relevant data from public tenders in a reusable format according to their product profile. This can be done by any subscriber simply by changing the delivery options in the 10ders Alerts dashboard:

Let's remember that Euroalert services for corporate clients already provide contents in different reusable formats which allow, e.g., the publication on other websites. However, subscribers to the alerting service in public tenders are typically end users and, therefore, their approach should be different. Besides, as this service is mainly used by people whose usual working tools are the most common office packages, we chose Microsoft Excel as the format for providing tender alerts' contents by email.

If you are interested in testing this service for free, you only need to apply for it by sending us an email to TenderAlerts@euroalert.net, and we will provide you with the necessary assistance to opt-in.

The price of this new service is 45 euros/month (432 euros/year) although all new subscriptions as well as current customers will benefit until the end of the year of a reduced price of 20 euros/month (192 euros/year). We hope this new service which complements Euroalert intelligence products on public markets, will help all companies in the Euroalert community to improve their performance in public markets.

Euroalert presented as European Open Data initiative at the Digital Agenda Assembly

2011-06-23T18:22:00.001+02:00

Last June 16th, we had the honour to make a presentation on Euroalert as leading Open Data company at European level in the Assembly of the Digital Agenda. As you know the European Digital Agenda 2020 is the EU strategy for the development of the digital economy in Europe, so the opportunity to make this presentation has been a great recognition of our work.
May and June, both months, have been very intense for Euroalert with regard to its participation in events in relation to Open Data. After participating in the Share-PSI seminar and the annual meeting of the Aporta project in Madrid, our participation to the Open Data workshop at the Digital Agenda Assembly has been a great culmination.
We are also excited to see how the Open Data community is keeping growing and it continues to arouse a great interest. The Open Data workshop was one of those who attracted more public and sparked more conversation on Twitter. The importance of the Open Data was also shown by the Open Data and Hack4Europe Challenge! competitions which awards were given at the Digital Agenda Assembly too by Neelie Kroes, Commission vice-president.
For those who could not attend or watch the event streamed, the Digital Agenda website put to your disposal all the presentations. We want to provide you here an extended version of the slides used to present Euroalert:Building a pan-European platform to aggregate public procurement data and deliver commercial services for SMEs powered by open data

We are very proud to have been part of this great event and we take this opportunity to thank you for your support. You are part of the Euroalert success in having the best information services with regard to the EU procurement services. From our side, we keep working hard for providing you the best service.