Tender Process at the National Library of Malta

The National Library of Malta

“… to acquire, catalogue and preserve manuscripts, books, journals, periodicals and other online and electronic material issued in Malta…”

Tenders are open invitations to sell or buy a product, service or contract. These are generally published as legal notices in the Government Gazette as was the tender for The Implementation, testing and training of a Digital Assets Management Software System of the National Library of Malta (NLM.)

Tender document regarding management software system

 The open tender of the NLM required certain administrative tasks which are preparation, adjudication and implementation. In the preparation phase the proper tender period, advertising date, closing date, time and location are chosen. Studies such as on the available budget, human resources, type of software to be used are carried out. The written document must be in line with the public procurement regulations which regularly amended. 

The adjudication phase follows where a board is appointed to list and record tenders, apply selection criteria, evaluates and recommends the report.

The last stage is the implementation phase where evaluation of the tender is submitted and approved by the Department of Contracts (since amount of tender was more than €120,000.) Testing, evaluation, training of staff and deployment are also done.

 

How the system must work

Technical aspects include these six standards:

i.   Metadata: using a Dublin Core

ii.  Input : excel and xml files

iii. Export : required export facility to be used

iv. Output : what is shown on screen and printing options

v.  Reporting : what type of records have been exported or number of files created

vi. Audit trail : for accountability

       Presentation held by Mr Mamo (National Librarian & CEO) and Mrs Sciberras (Deputy Librarian, National Library)