The eProcurement Ontology

The eProcurement Ontology (ePO) is a vocabulary that models the concepts used in EU public procurement. It does not represent the eProcurement process itself, it defines the concepts used in the different parts of the public procurement lifecycle.

The ePO conceptualises, formally encodes, and provides structured data about public procurement in both human and machine-readable formats. It is modelled in alignment with EU Directives and Regulations and is a formal standard.

The eProcurement Ontology ensures that every participant in the procurement process is speaking the same language i.e., that the concepts and definitions are the same and have the same meaning for all parties.

More detail and background can be found in the Motivation for the development of an ePO.

ePO covers public Procurement from end to end i.e., from notification, through tendering, awarding, ordering, invoicing, and payment.

To build and maintain the ontology, The European Commission’s Publications Office (OP) formed a Working Group (WG) of experts with the mission of building consensus on the analysis, results, and deliverables developed by the OP’s teams.

Start here for an introduction:

The following topics are included in this version of the eProcurement Ontology documentation: