A Fair e-Tendering Protocol

Fairness in electronic tendering is of utmost importance. Current proposals and implementations do not provide fairness and are vulnerable to collusion and favouritism. Dishonest participants, either the principal or tenderer can collude to alter or view competing tenders which would give the favoured tenderer a greater chance of winning the contract. This paper proposes an e-tendering system that is secure and fair to all participants. We employ the techniques of anonymous token system along with signed commitment approach to achieve a publicly verifiable fair e-tendering protocol. We also provide a analysis that confirms that our e-tendering protocol achieves the claimed security goals.