eForms is a new backbone system through which Slovakia sends public procurement notices to the Official Journal of the EU and to the national bulletin. It was supposed to simplify life, but practice showed the opposite: more fields and obligations were added. Nevertheless, it is key for data collection and linking to European tools.
Teething problems and a marathon of versions
The project started under a state-owned company, where for a long time the reports looked "green", but the reality was different and the system had to be rescued across two governments. After the supplier entered liquidation, the office suddenly lost its partner and faced a choice: a risky direct award or an open competition. It chose a competition, dealt with objections, signed the contract in December, and the new team had only roughly three months to deliver an upgraded version. The system works today, but its version will be current only briefly: an upgrade to 1.13 is pending, while the EU has in the meantime moved the reference version up to 2.0, so Slovakia is chasing the peloton.
Impacts on practice, new obligations, and what comes next
The biggest shock came with version 1.7: officials were filling out about three times as many fields instead of roughly a hundred, even though the visuals were modernized. Newer versions have eased the changes for users, although "under the hood" tens of thousands of validation rules have been added. The reason for the expanding agenda is the Green Deal: systems must know how many "green" buses are being purchased, whether timber comes from legal sources, or whether public buildings are introducing green roofs and energy-saving solutions. The European Commission requests these data so it can measure policies, not just declare them.
Funding is now covered mainly by the Recovery Plan (the current and the next version), but further sustainability is not ensured and will require the state budget or new European sources. The fragmented governance of digital procurement (part at ÚVO, part at the Government Office, electronic invoicing not finalized) calls for consolidation. The lesson from the crisis-driven development is simple: critical state IT should be entrusted only to entities with real capacity and continuous accountability. Alongside the "heavyweight" eForms, the office is also trying smaller innovations, for example an assistant for preparing documentation and contracts developed by a student team from a hackathon.
