eForms SDK

The eForms SDK is the authoritative technical backbone of the EU's digital procurement notice system. It is maintained and published by the Publications Office of the European Union as an open-source repository, and it defines precisely how every eForms notice must be structured, validated, and translated for publication on TED.

What is the eForms SDK?

SDK stands for Software Development Kit. In the context of eForms, the SDK is a versioned package of machine-readable specifications that tells software developers, contracting authorities, and procurement platform providers exactly how to build, validate, and submit procurement notices in eForms format.

The SDK contains several interconnected components. Field definitions specify every business term (BT field) that can appear in a notice, including its identifier, label, data type, repeatable status, and the notice types in which it is mandatory, optional, or forbidden. Validation rules, expressed as schematron assertions, check that submitted notices meet logical consistency requirements beyond basic schema validation. Controlled vocabularies provide the authorised code lists for structured fields such as procedure type, contract type, CPV codes, and country codes. Translation tables supply the multilingual labels for each field across all EU official languages. Notice type definitions map the 40 notice subtypes to their permitted and required fields.

The SDK is versioned, and each major version corresponds to a regulation update or significant structural change. Contracting authorities and e-procurement system providers must declare which SDK version they used when submitting a notice, and TED validates submissions against the declared version.

Why the eForms SDK matters for bidders

Bidders do not interact with the SDK directly, but it shapes everything they see when reviewing a European procurement notice. Because the SDK enforces a consistent structure, procurement data aggregators can reliably extract and compare fields such as contract value, award criteria weighting, time limit for receipt of tenders, and selection criteria across thousands of notices published by hundreds of contracting authorities in dozens of countries.

The SDK also determines what information buyers are required to disclose. Fields marked as mandatory in the SDK cannot be omitted. This means that as the SDK evolves and new mandatory fields are introduced, bidders benefit from richer, more standardised disclosure even from authorities that historically published minimal information.

For suppliers using automated opportunity monitoring platforms, the SDK version compatibility of a given notice matters because it determines which fields are available in machine-readable form and which may have been submitted in an older format with less structured data.

Example

A Polish contracting authority submits a Contract Notice to TED. Its e-procurement system generates an XML file structured according to eForms SDK version 1.10. TED runs schematron validation against that version's rules, checking that mandatory BT fields are present, that conditional fields appear only when their conditions are met, and that all controlled vocabulary values are from the authorised code lists. Only after passing validation is the notice published and made available to suppliers across Europe.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where can I find the eForms SDK?

The SDK is published as an open-source repository by the Publications Office of the EU. It is freely available and includes full documentation, schematron files, field lists, and changelog notes for each version.

How often does the SDK change?

The SDK is updated periodically to reflect regulatory amendments, corrections to field definitions, and improvements identified through implementation experience. Major versions are infrequent; minor patch releases are more regular. TED maintains a compatibility window, accepting notices submitted against recent SDK versions even after a newer version is released.

Do I need to understand the SDK to bid on EU contracts?

No. The SDK is a technical specification for system builders. As a supplier, you interact with eForms data through procurement portals and market intelligence platforms that have already implemented SDK-compliant parsing. You see structured fields, not raw XML.