Product-Neutral Tender for Multifunctional Devices

Guideline for Public IT Procurement: With product specifications for environmental protection, energy efficiency, accessibility and IT security

This guideline provides an overview of the foundations and criteria for the procurement of print-ers and multifunctional devices (MFD) via public administration. This guideline is the result of a working group involving the Procurement Office of the Federal Ministry of the Interior and Bitkom e.V

This document aims to provide public contracting entities of Germany’s federal, state and local governments with a dependable and understandable tool in order to help them formulate their calls for tender for the procurement of printers and multifunctional devices in a product-neu-tral manner, i.e., without the use of trademarked names and without mentioning individual manufacturers, while taking into consideration current technological standards. While printers are mainly characterised by their printing function, multifunctional devices combine several function-alities (e.g., printing, scanning, copying, faxing) in one device (comparable to the development of mobile phones into smartphones).