Scholarly research on e-procurement has been limited and, like e-government, e-procurement has been researched primarily from the perspective of adoption/non-adoption. This paper focuses on public administration employees’ perceptions of the quality of NEN – the Czech national e-procurement tool they are required to use. The paper is based primarily on statistical analysis of data obtained through two questionnaire surveys addressed to contacts from of all Czech central state administration bodies using NEN; 175 completed questionnaires were gathered in 2020 and 128 in 2022 and subjected to statistical analysis in SPSS. NEN was launched as fully operational in August 2015. The research indicates that in 2022 there were still important gaps in the quality of NEN as perceived by public employees. The paper has important practical implications for e-procurement policy makers. It shows that making an e-procurement system compulsory is not sufficient. The government needs to guarantee that it will be competitive with tools that would otherwise be preferred by public employees. Otherwise, the application of the digital-by-default principle may lead to institutionalisation of services that are not user-friendly. This has important implications for e-government/e-procurement management and change management. The paper has important practical implications for e-procurement policy makers. It shows that making the e-procurement system compulsory is not sufficient. The government needs to guarantee that it would be competitive with tools that would otherwise be preferred. Otherwise, the application of the digital-by-default principle may lead to institutionalisation of services that are not user-friendly. This has important implications for e-government/e-procurement management and change management. Little is known about public employees’ perceptions of the quality of e-government and e-procurement. Although e-procurement is an area where the digital-by-default principle was implemented rather early, the quality of e-procurement has still received limited attention in research.