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Towards secure and legal e-tendering

Betts, Martin and Black, Peter and Christensen, Sharon and Dawson, Edward and Du, Rong and Duncan, William and Foo, Ernest and Gonzalez Nieto, Juan (2006) Towards secure and legal e-tendering. Journal of Information Technology in Construction (ITcon) 11:pp. 89-102.

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Abstract

Tendering processes are considered to be a suitable mechanism for governments to fairly assign contracts for construction projects and procurement. The demand for efficiencies to be created in the process has resulted in a significant number of governments implementing e-tendering systems. E-tendering systems generally involve the submission of tender offer documents to a secure system hosted by the government (principal). An electronic environment presents obvious opportunities for collusion between principal and certain tenderers, fraud by tenderers and a minefield of legal uncertainties for fuelling protracted disputes. Critical examination of the security and legal requirements for e-tendering systems does not appear in the current literature. This paper identifies key security and legal issues to be addressed in the design of e-tendering systems, which may be included in e-procurement software, and proposes a new e-tendering architecture, using distributed trusted third parties which may be suitable for secure large scale operations such as the construction industry.

Item Type:Journal Article
RM Number:2007001029
Status:Published
Subjects:390000 Law, Justice and Law Enforcement > 390100 Law > 390104 Commercial and Contract Law
ID Code:6559
Deposited By:Christensen, Sharon A
Deposited On:16 March 2007
Alternative Locations:http://www.itcon.org/data/works/att/2006_7.content.06035.pdf, http://www.itcon.org/cgi-bin/works/Show?2006_7
Copyright Owner:Copyright 2006 (please consult the authors)
Additional Information:The contents of this journal can be freely accessed online via the journal’s web page. Use hypertext link above.