Audit of e-Procurement
Country : India
Year Published: 2014
Language: English
Sector: Cross-government and Public administration
Issue: E-Governance
Description
Government of Karnataka (GoK) envisaged a project to provide unified end-to-end e-Procurement solution to cover all procurement processes from preparation of estimate/indents to final payment of bills to the contractors. The main objective of the e-Procurement project (project) was smart governance, improvement of efficiency, cost saving, ensuring consistency in cost of goods, providing fair competitive platform, arresting cartel formation of suppliers/ contractors/bidders etc. All the departments of the State Government whose tender value is more than ` five lakh are mandated to float tenders through the e-Procurement portal. The work relating to e-Procurement was awarded (December 2006) to M/s. Hewlett Packard Sales India Private Ltd (Partner) as Application Service Provider adopting Public Private Partnership model where the bidder pays for using the services. The revenue earned is shared between the Partner and the Centre for e-Governance, Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms (DPAR), the implementing agency as per agreed rates. The project went live during March 2011.
Summary/Highlight:
Delay and poor implementation led to the government not deriving full benefit of the unified e-Procurement solution. The off-the-shelf e-Procurement application was not adequately customised to suit the specific user requirements and KTPP provisions. Opportunities for using IT for improving efficiencies has not been utilised fully. Inadequate testing had lead to incomplete supplier history and incorrect management information system reports. The application suffered from four out of the OWASP Top Ten security vulnerabilities. Although the Government had intended to implement an end-to-end procurement solution with benefits of transparency and smart governance, the e-Procurement portal had no information about contracts concluded, works in progress, works completed, goods supplies done, expenditure progress, abandoned works, letters of intent and works yet to be started.
Thus, the project failed in achieving its intended benefits of transparency and smart governance, leading to a situation where the envisaged end-to-end procurement solution for Government of Karnataka was used only as a tender processing website even after eight years of its implementation.