Regulated under Articles 223 through 226 of Spain's Public Sector Contracts Law (Law 9/2017), a DPS is a fully electronic process where suppliers pre-qualify once and subsequently compete for specific contracts whenever a public authority has a need. While it sounds similar to a framework agreement, the core difference is decisive: whereas a framework agreement closes its list of suppliers at the outset, a DPS allows new vendors to join at any point throughout its operational lifecycle.

In fast-moving technology markets where major new players emerge every few months, this is no minor detail—it is the difference between an adaptable system and a fossilized framework.
‍

Four Virtues for Procuring Innovation

No tender board; single-envelope evaluation. For specific contracts awarded under a DPS, a formal tender board (mesa de contratación) is not mandatory, and single-envelope submissions are permitted (combining both objective, formula-driven criteria and qualitative judgments). The established legal interpretation is that the standard rule requiring over 50% objective criteria does not apply automatically. In plain terms: qualitative criteria can be weighted above 50%.

Criteria defined per contract, not upfront. Under a framework agreement, award criteria are locked in when the agreement is initially published. Under a DPS, criteria are tailored to each specific contract. If the market shifts from on-premise infrastructure to SaaS models within a single year, the procurement adapts instantly. A framework agreement cannot do this.

Appeals do not cause automatic suspensions. A special procurement appeal filed against a specific contract within a DPS does not automatically freeze the procedure. While it does not eliminate judicial protection—the reviewing body can still issue a precautionary stay if warranted—it drastically reduces the risk of project standstills. For tech procurement, where time-to-market matters just as much as price, this advantage is substantial.

Real speed. Taken together, specific contracts within a DPS can be awarded in weeks rather than months. We have seen awards completed in under 30 calendar days—and, in the best cases, in as little as a single day. Compared to standard open procedures, it is a completely different paradigm.

The Design Decisions That Change Everything

If DPSs are currently underutilized, it is not due to any inherent flaw, but because designing them well requires technical choices that authorities do not always get right on the first attempt. Three decisions are critical:

• Avoiding budget allocation by lot: Attaching a fixed budget to each individual lot introduces severe rigidity. If, by the end of the year, an agency exhausts Lot A but leaves Lot B virtually untouched, those funds cannot be transferred. The golden rule—unless demand per category is known with absolute certainty—is to establish a global budget ceiling for the overall system and let real demand drive the distribution across lots.
• Setting capacity requirements by category: A DPS allows for differentiated capacity criteria across categories. When a company applies to join multiple categories, the required threshold is calculated as an average rather than a cumulative total or maximum. This enables small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to compete in balanced category combinations without having to prove the peak capacity required for the most demanding category alone.
• Leveraging electronic catalogs: Regulated under Article 36 of Directive 2014/24/EU, the e-catalog is the most underrated lever of the DPS model. It standardizes supplier offers into a common, machine-readable format, allowing for automated comparisons and reopening competition without having to launch new administrative proceedings from scratch. A DPS paired with an electronic catalog is to public administration what a curated marketplace is to e-commerce: procurement staff can focus on qualitative evaluation while the system handles the rest.

Buying Tech Well Is, Above All, a Design Challenge

Investing in sophisticated legal design, developing a deep understanding of market dynamics, and deploying a robust DPS management platform is arguably the highest-leverage move a tech-buying public agency can make today. It yields a far higher return than negotiating over the final price of individual contracts, offers far greater longevity than any closed framework agreement, and aligns seamlessly with the future direction of European public procurement regulation.

‍

‍

‍

—

This article is adapted from an exclusive talk on DPSs in public procurement hosted as part of Gobe Ventures subscription activities.

‍