ITcon Vol. 11, Special Issue e-Commerce in construction , pg. 89-102, http://www.itcon.org/2006/7

TOWARDS SECURE AND LEGAL E-TENDERING

SUBMITTED: June 2005
REVISED: December 2005
PUBLISHED: April 2006
EDITOR: Ruikar K

Martin Betts, Dean
Faculty of Built Environment and Engineering, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
email: m.betts@qut.edu.au

Peter Black, Associate Lecturer
School of Law, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
email: p2.black@qut.edu.au

Sharon Christensen, Professor and Deputy Director
Information Security Institute, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
email: s.christensen@qut.edu.au

Ed Dawson, Professor and Director
Information Security Institute, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
email: e.dawson@qut.edu.au

Rong Du, Ph.D. student
Information Security Institute, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
email: r.du@qut.edu.au

William Duncan, Professor
Queensland University of Technology, Australia
email: w.duncan@qut.edu.au

Ernest Foo, Lecturer
Faculty of Information Technology, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
email: e.foo@qut.edu.au

Juan González Nieto, Research Fellow
Information Security Institute, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
email: juanma@qut.edu.au

SUMMARY: Tendering processes are considered to be a suitable mechanism for governments to fairly assign contracts for construction projects and procurement. The demand for efficiencies to be created in the process has resulted in a significant number of governments implementing e-tendering systems. E-tendering systems generally involve the submission of tender offer documents to a secure system hosted by the government (principal). An electronic environment presents obvious opportunities for collusion between principal and certain tenderers, fraud by tenderers and a minefield of legal uncertainties for fuelling protracted disputes. Critical examination of the security and legal requirements for e-tendering systems does not appear in the current literature. This paper identifies key security and legal issues to be addressed in the design of e-tendering systems, which may be included in e-procurement software, and proposes a new e-tendering architecture, using distributed trusted third parties which may be suitable for secure large scale operations such as the construction industry.

KEYWORDS: e-tendering, law, security, authentication, architectures.

FULL TEXT: file.pdf (106,334 bytes)

CITATION:

Betts M, Black P, Christensen S, Dawson E, Du R, Duncan W, Foo E and González J (2006) TOWARDS SECURE AND LEGAL E-TENDERING, ITcon Vol. 11, Special Issue e-Commerce in construction , pg. 89-102, http://www.itcon.org/2006/7