Seminar on Adoption of eInvoicing in Public Administration

The main objective of this seminar is to present outputs from eInvoicing adoption projects in progress in different public institutions and to disseminate the type of solutions found to help eInvoicing spread rapidly.

You can obtain information and watch demonstrations of solutions for receiving, issuing and archiving eInvoices, including some of those mentioned in the scheduled presentations, in a specially reserved adjacent exhibition area (which may be visited during the coffee break, lunch break and at the end of the seminar). This exhibition will feature 10 companies supplying eInvoicing products and services from ViaCTT and CODIPOR – Portuguese Product Identification Association.

More than 30 eInvoicing adoption projects are in progress and this figure continues to grow. These projects involve bodies from 12 of the 14 Ministries and also encompass the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, including 12 Secretary Generals’ Offices that currently provide shared Public e-Procurement services. The projects are putting eInvoicing solutions that have shown their effectiveness in real situations into practice. These can be used as shared services within each Ministry, enabling eInvoicing to be adopted immediately in all its bodies.

The Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC)’s process of encouraging the adoption of eInvoicing has been underway for roughly 5 months. There has been intensive interaction with the more than 30 bodies involved in the projects, with an extensive array of eInvoicing solution provider companies, and with the major suppliers of goods and services to the Public Administration, who may now issue eInvoices. This process has enabled there to be considerable progress in an extensive range of companies’ eInvoicing service provision capabilities with all the necessary legal conditions. It has also sped up major suppliers’ development of capabilities and readiness to actually issue eInvoices.

The aim was to galvanise a broad assortment of eInvoicing solution provider companies with the only limitations being their interest, availability and technical capability so as to stimulate their readiness to provide this type of services. In this way, in addition to the obvious importance of the Public Administration adopting eInvoicing to encourage its adoption in the private sector due to the sheer volume of associated commercial transactions, this process is also functioning as an aid and stimulus for the adoption of eInvoicing in the public sector by improving the availability of a variety of solutions and providers for this type of services on the market.

Starting at 3.30pm, the Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education, José Mariano Gago, shall visit the demonstration exhibition on receiving, issuing and archiving eInvoices located in the area adjacent to the auditorium where the seminar shall take place.

In August 2005, the Government stipulated that the Public Administration would adopt issuing and the preferential reception of eInvoices by the end of 2006, the objective being to allow the Public Administration to contribute once more to stimulating companies’ adoption of eInvoicing and, more generally, to increasing eCommerce, thereby contributing to modernising the national economy and making it more competitive.