A Semantically Enriched E-Tendering Mechanism

E-tendering is widely used in corporate and government purchasing in e-business practice. Existing etendering platforms cannot solve semantic interoperability problems between heterogeneous e-tendering systems. This paper proposes a novel semantic-enriched e-tendering (SEET) approach, which enables heterogeneous e-tendering systems to be semantically connected and interoperable by applying collaborative conceptualization theory. Based on this approach, a SEET platform is implemented and guarantees that e-tender inviters and e-tender bidders can exchange their e-tendering documents in a semantically consistent manner. Keywords-electronic tenderring; tender; inviter; bid, bidder; semantic interoperability; semantic heterogeneity; semantic consistency; e-tendering document; document engineering