Public Sector Opportunities to tackle the crisis (I)

Over the last weeks, or even months, we have been waking up with worse and worse news about the global financial situation and the consequences of the economic turmoil. Rescue measures for some major financials institutions, emergency meetings at the highest EU level, attempts to reassure European savings, ..., are at the top of last days news. In such a situation, one can't help but rush every morning to read the news at Euroalert.net, to check whether the storm calmed down, or if we should still be worrying about any new financial disaster.

In such circumstances it seems that a new scenario has been installed, to which we should better be familiar as soon as possible... So, the time has come to take action and apply imaginative solutions, such as turning to Public Sector and find ways to get the most of all the opportunities it is offering to us.

How many times have you realized, once it was too late, that you could have submitted a proposal for a European project? This happens too often ... Or even worse, what happens when one is not aware of the opportunities he's missing to finance projects, just because he doesn't even know about them?! That's too bad...

Don't let this happen to you again ... in Euroalert.net you will find updated information about the calls for proposals published in the OJEU. Also, if you have a website or intranet in which you could publish those informations (i.e., if you are a sectoral organization, a public institution or if you have a company intranet), you can include those Calls for EU Projects among your contents using our Calls widget. Thus, your users will not pass by potential opportunities to get public funding.

These widgets will help you to display in your web sites updated and timely information about the Calls for Proposals to finance projects, and your users will have easy access to all the details concerning them: deadlines and submission procedures, funded actions, budget .... and no need for you to track the Official Journal.

In our last post we already spoke about the new 2008 CPV Codes which apply to EU Calls for Tenders. Those are also good opportunities offered by public procurement on services, supplies or even for the execution of construction works; but this is something we will talk about in a future post.

See... crisis times can also be an opportunity to build up new skills, such as making good use of all the funding instruments the EU is offering us.

New Tender's CPV codes already in Euroalert.net

Those of you who are already subscribers of the Euroalert.net weekly Newsletter, will be aware of the changes that the Office for Official Publications of the European Communities has made on the CPV codes which describe the content of contracts in public procurement. For those who haven't subscribed to the Newsletter yet, here are some tips.

Every day, the OJEU publishes in the S Series, more than one thousand calls for tenders for works, services or supplies contracts in public procurement: the same you can find every morning in Euroalert.net Calls for Tenders section.

In order to allow economic operators to have free and easy access to these contracts, CPV codes (whose 2008 version has been adopted September 17th), provide a unique classification vocabulary. This system is made up of a main vocabulary of eight digits which give a detailed description of the product or service the contract is related to, followed by a check digit which verifies the code. The more you go down in this tree structure, the more accurate the description is. Simple, isn't it?

There is also a supplementary vocabulary which, although it is not always used, helps to complete even more the description giving some additional details for one specific call. This is the short version of the full description of the new CPV codes for Public Procurement Announcements which we provide you in Euroalert.net. In this section you will also find some documents you can download, which will certainly be useful.

In essence, this coding system aims to provide the highest transparency and accessibility to information, contributing to the fulfilment of the Four Freedoms within the EU Single Market.

In fact, Euroalert.net widgets also provides some tools which can help to improve access to calls for tenders and commercial opportunities in public procurement within the EU, as it allows not only to automatically display them in any website, intranet or blog, but also to filter the results and display only those which really meet the needs of the subscribers. In order to make you as easy as possible to access EU contents, in Euroalert.net we have introduced those changes over the CPV codes from the very first day, adapting the publication and filters to these news.

In future posts we will be spending some time explaining how you can get the most from Euroalert.net Calls for Tenders widgets in public procurement, using the CPV codes, as well as some other features.

More accesible contact details in Tenders and Commercial Opportunities

As we have already told you in some occasions, one of our main concerns in Euroalert.net is make life easier for all our users. Well, one might find this objective a little bit too ambitious :) but, at least we try to do so by giving you as much information as possible and always in the most accessible and easy way.

This is the general idea that inspires the widgets that Euroalert.net provides in order to display EU contents automatically in any website or intranet, and is also the purpose to implement new features in our contents, such as we did, not so long ago, with the site plans of the Commission's DGs that appear in the Calls for Proposals.

Making things easier for users is also what we are intending to do by adding a new address layout for contact details in the Calls for Tenders.

Until now, the Calls for Tenders used to display the relevant contact details for each Call, such as the Contracting Authority, the institutions where further informations or documents can be requested, or any other relevant contact; just as part of the general text of the Call. From now on, these informations (the name of the contact person, the address, telephone, fax the e-mail, website...) will be isolated and highlighted in a box, and each of them will be identified with its own icon.

All these data are, of course, marked following the hcard microformat, according to our strict commitment to meet open standards and recommendations from the most prestigious international organizations.

So, with a quick overview you will have a straight forward access to the basic data of the contacts related to the Call you are interested in. This is one more way to make informations more usable and accessible for all Euroalert.net users and subscribers!

Waiting for Google Chrome

Over the last week, there have been a lot of, generally, enthusiastic announcements about how fast Google Chrome is acquiring a significant share of the Internet web browsers market. Some specialized webstats companies like StatCounter or XiTi, have already published shares between 1-2% less than 72 hours after the launch. Blogs for more or less geek users, such as SearchEngineWatch, have announced shares around 5% (Wow!!). The usage share in the first days of the new-born browser, at least in those hype moments, seem to make it the definitive browser.

In Euroalert.net we do not want to feel less than anybody, and therefore, want to publish our own data... So, we have to publicly announce that this week we almost haven't received any visit with Google Chrome. As these figures only show that a limited 0,5% of our traffic has been generated using this new tool, we can't even make any speculation about which browser has been substituted by this new one.

Those figures make us very proud, because they show something we already suspected..., that you, the users who usually visit Euroalert.net to look for relevant contents about the European Union for your work, do not have time to install the ultimate-most-fashionable browser and make tests. This is something you do later at home, when you are relaxing just reading your favourite blogs... :)

In any case, those figures encourage us to keep on offering you the best information about EU funding opportunities, commercial opportunities available in more than 30 countries, and, of course, the hottest EU News. This is the best way to keep the Community of Euroalert.net users always growing and growing, no matter the browser you use.

By the way, just as a curiosity, here is an image to show you how Euroalert.net would be displayed using Google Chrome:

Euroalert.net opens its facebook fan page

Today we are making a very brief-August-type, but still exciting, announcement: Euroalert.net just joined Facebook and opened its fan page!!!

As every new release, it is still very simple but we hope it will grow and become a great space where all of you, the Euroalert.net community can interact, share and of course meet each other.

You are all invited to become facebook fans and supporters and join the Euroalert.net facebook page!!!

A new Directory of Blogs about the EU!

July is coming to its end... And although some of you might already be suntanned, or are about to flight to your holiday destinations, we can't stop giving you some news. So, we will finish this month announcing that we have just inaugurated a new content section: the Directory of Blogs about the EU of Euroalert.net!

During the last years the blogosphere has not stopped growing and, step by step, a lot of Euro-fans, Euro-sceptics, Euro-students, Euro-journalists, Euro-politicians, ..., and many other kind of internauts interested by the adventure of the EU, have joined it. Well, now in Euroalert.net we have a new space specially dedicated to them, a new space for you... :)

We are just getting started and for the moment we have a short selection, so all your contributions will be welcomed! If you have among your favourite blogs some that you think could be interesting for our Community, or if you maintain your own blog about the EU, just send us an email so we can have a look at it and add it to the Directory.

We will keep on updating the Directory with your contributions and with all the blogs we will find interesting for you. And don't forget that Euroalert.net is multilingual :), so if you have some Spanish skills, have a look at the Spanish version of the Directory of blogs!

Site plans of the Eropean Commission Directorates-General Offices

What we are bringing to you today, is one more small detail that we have included in the features of Euroalert.net. One of the informations we provide you in the files of the Calls for Proposals and EU Programmes in Euroalert.net are the data to locate the Directorate or Directorates General of the European Commission that are responsible for the management of financial opportunities and where, for instance, you could apply for further informations or ask for valuable indications or clarifications.

Although the good-old-days when you had to go to Brussels, with the whole file in your brief-case to submit your project or present your application in the appropriate desk, are nowadays completely over, having clear informations about where we can obtain further details is something that can be very useful at some point. Getting lost in Brussels while you are looking for an address is an experience that we would like to save you..., and for that purpose we have included a little help: the georeferenced situation on Google Maps, or the cyber-version of the trail of breadcrumbs in fairy tales :)

With this new feature, when you will browse the information about an EU Programme or Call for Proposal, and want to know the exact situation of the DG responsible for it, you will only have to click on the link to the address and you will have the site plan. That's it! Just as simple as that, with no more search, you will have all the information from the beginning!

All those new features we are introducing step by step, are intended to make Euroalert.net an ever better site for you, providing you with more complete and useful contents. We will keep on improving!