Public procurement notice: Voluntary Ex Ante Transparency Notice
Published: 2024-06-20
Buyer: NDLA
Country: NO
Region: NO0A2
Contract type: Supplies
Procedure: Negotiated without a prior call for competition
CPV classification: 48000000 | 72000000
Estimated value:  NOK

Technical requirements: NDLA has developed and currently delivers a joint service for generative AI models that gives students and teachers access to privacy-secure service. This is a service that is provided to teachers and students in all counties that are owners of NDLA. The service is provided from Microsoft ́s European servers and the use of the service in its current form is insignificant.   

The contracting authority intends to expand the contract with Microsoft and to expand our service by giving pupils and teachers access to more and generate generative AI models for training purposes. The expansion will lead to a significant increase in the consumption of cloud services, and will be based on ongoing subscriptions, invoiced after use.  

It is important for NDLA to offer the tools and services that are most relevant in the press and business sector. Currently this is ChatGPT from OpenAI, which is procured by different university colleges and companies, and Copilot from Microsoft, solutions based on APIs from OpenAI and delivered as part of Office 365 and Microsoft Azure developer support for Open AI's APIs, which are used in most simple internet chat systems. 

In order for NDLA's teaching aids to reflect this reality, it is necessary to offer pupils and teachers access to ChatGPT from Open AI. We can do this through access to OpenAI's APIs via Microsoft Azure. 

There are two technical requirements for this procurement: 

• It is OpenAI's APIs that we will be demonstrating. 
• We have to ensure pupils' privacy and use services that run on European servers. 

NDLA has conducted market surveys and has assessed the alternatives that are available, based on information on the tenderer's own websites and market communication.

Of the three major public cloud services providers who have artificial intelligence solutions - Amazon, Google and Microsoft - only Microsoft Azure delivers Open AI APIs today on the terms requested by NDLA, including our privacy requirements. 

Likewise, the surveys have demonstrated that there are no reasonable alternatives and that a lack of competition is not due to the contracting authority having adapted the procurement documents to a particular tenderer. As a result, our requirements can only be met by Microsoft.

It is therefore the contracting authority ́s assessment that the procurement is for services that only a specific tenderer can deliver because a competition is impossible for technical reasons, and that the sole supplier exception in PPR § 13-4 letter b no. 2 has been fulfilled.
The contracting authority published an intention notice 30.05.24, which for various reasons proved incomplete and supplements the information with this amendment notice. The contracting authority will enter into a contract with the chosen tenderer at the earliest 10 days after the publication of the amendment notice.


Winner: Microsoft Norge AS
Award value: 7200000