Bulgarian subsidiaries of Siemens and Hewlett-Packard (HP) were among the candidates to build the electronic government (e-government) infrastructure in three major Bulgarian cities, the Ministry of State Administration and Administrative Reform said on October 23, as quoted by investor.bg.

Siemens IT Solutions and Services EOOD, HP Bulgaria EOOD, as well as three Bulgarian consortia - Centre for e-Government, Storma and InfoProgress were the five applicants to take part in a tender, organised by the ministry, to build and maintain the IT infrastructure of the territorial e-government centres in the capital Sofia, the Black Sea city of Varna and in Sliven, Southern Bulgaria.

The order would include the design, development and implementation of projects for offering electronic services and creating the network for integrated administrative servicing at a central and local level. One of the cornerstones of the initiative would be the launch of a Unified Portal for Access to Electronic Administrative Service (UPAEAS), and another would be to create a single document exchange environment.

The project would run for three years and it was to be implemented in three stages. The first stage would see the building of the technological infrastructure and the development of certain electronic services. During the second stage, the successful bidder would have to provide the proper database security and protection system. The third and final stage should see the launch of all administrative services online.