Public procurement notice: Voluntary Ex Ante Transparency Notice
Published: 2023-05-24
Buyer: Forsvaret v/Forsvarets logistikkorganisasjon
Country: NO
Contract type: Services
Procedure: Contract award without prior publication
CPV classification: 79611000
Estimated value: 11000000 NOK

Technical requirements: With this notice of intent, the Norwegian Armed Forces and the Norwegian Defence Materiel Administration (the "Contracting Authority") would like to inform the market of their intention to enter into a contract with Finn.no for the publication of job advertisements. The contract will be signed as a tender procedure without a contest. The purpose of the voluntary ex-ante transparency notice is that the Contracting Authority would like to be transparent and provide the market with the opportunity to raise objections to the above-mentioned contract signature.
If the Contracting Authority does not receive any objections by 29.05.23, a contract will be signed with Finn.no for the publication of job advertisements.
The Contracting Authority has conducted market research and concluded that only Finn.no can provide the requested service that fulfils the Contracting Authority's needs and requirements. A procurement will therefore be made without a contest, cf. §13-4 of the Public Procurement Regulations. For further information about the assessment, refer to the tender documentation.
The contract with Finn.no will be ongoing. The contracting authority has an estimated annual need of NOK 2.75 million excluding VAT. A new voluntary ex-ante transparency notice will be issued in 4 years regarding the status. The value of the procurement is therefore estimated at NOK 11 million excluding VAT over 4 years. It should be noted that the Contracting Authority will also conduct annual surveys to assess whether the market has changed and, consequently, whether a contest for the service should be organised.
The authority to carry out procurement without competition is in accordance with the PPR §13-4 (b), no. 2 and 3. The contracting authority can make a procurement without a contest for services that only a specific supplier can provide because, (no. 2) competition is impossible due to technical reasons or, (no. 3) the tenderer has a monopoly, including immaterial rights. This exemption only applies when there are no reasonable alternative and the lack of competition is not due to the contracting authority having adapted the procurement documents for a specific supplier.
The technical aspect of the service is linked to the Armed Forces' recruiting system WebCruiter. The Armed Forces currently uses WebCruiter to prepare job advertisements and automatically disseminate the job advertisements directly to Forsvaret.no, Nav.no and Finn.no. There is a function in the job advertisements to send the applicant directly to WebCruiter to submit their application. Based on the market research, there are no other providers besides Finn.no that fulfil the technical functional requirements for integration with WebCruiter.
Further, Finn.no is the only provider that can meet the Contracting Authority's requirements for the advertising effect. The Contracting Authority depends on reaching a broad audience of job seekers in many different disciplines. Among the paid online platforms for publishing job advertisements, Finn.no has by far the largest advertising effect, measured in terms of number of ads, users and occupational groups, such that, in practice, Finn.no operates in a monopoly-like fashion.
It should be noted that the Contracting Authority has a framework agreement for media agency services, which covers the dissemination and purchase of the publication of job advertisements. Additional needs for the dissemination and publication of job advertisements will be purchased via the framework agreement, at which point all will be subject to competition. Consequently, other providers that do not fulfil the Contracting Authority's above-mentioned technical functional requirement to be able to issue the advertisements in-house may still be used in parallel with the agreement with Finn.no.


Winner: Finn.no AS
Award value: 11000000