Innovation Details


Innovation Title :

National E-GP System implementation of Nepal

Innovation ID :

SAPI160190

Relevant Focal Theme:

Use of ICT for Procurement Management and Useful Management Information

Proposer Details

 

Proposer Name:

Ramesh Kumar Sharma

Proposer Designation:

Secretary

Proposer Official Address:

Public Procurement Monitoring Office, Kathmandu, Nepal

Challenge Addressed:

 

E-Government Procurement (e-GP) initiation in Nepal was started by a comprehensive study “Electronic Government in Nepal” carried out in December 2003. An e-GP Readiness Assessment conducted in 2007, even before the PPMO was established, the level of readiness for e-GP in Nepal was reasonable scoring 2.22 out of 4, except for the major problem of the lack of an appropriate lead agency to drive and sponsor this procurement reform. Several building blocks for the implementation of e-GP in Nepal are already in place. The Internet connectivity is available in almost all government administrative premises up to local level, and significant number of Rural Community Centers, Cyber Cafes, and Business Centers are established across the country with ICT facilities. Currently PPMO is established and strongly fulfilling its mandate of governing public procurement sector in Nepal including the introduction of unitary National e-GP System. Lack of transparency in government procurement has been a systemic problem in Nepal. In addition, inefficiency due to manual and paper-driven procurement processes has resulted in poor service and limited participation of bidders. The study found that establishing an e-GP System could help improve transparency, efficiency, and value for money in government procurement. Stakeholders (government agencies and suppliers) showed their support for the e-GP concept. The strategy should recognize that there are elements of risk, which are unavoidable.


Impacts:

 

Since the market demand of e-GPwas already high, and the national level effort on the e-GPimplementation was much delayed, different government organizations started develop and implement some form of their own e-GPfunctionalities. At the same time, Nepal did not have any e-GPPolicy in place for the implementation of unitary e-GPsystem for the Government. The first such effort was started in 2007 by the Department of Roads with the functionality of bid submission online for their departmental use.Gradually other departments also developed and operated their own individual e-submission system and the number of these individual portals reached to 32 by 2012.


Lessons Learned:

 

These separate developments of e-Submission System within individual departments/public entities had following shortcomings: • Duplication and waste of national resources for the development and operation of multiple systems. • Difficult to control and check the compliance with legal framework. • Fragments the opportunities to the bidders. • Government's public procurement information is scattered. These shortcomings in turn impacted the development of efficient and effective high quality management framework to public sector procurement.


Level of Innovation:

 

In 2010 PPMO has prepared the Nepal Public Procurement Strategic Framework (NPPSF) Phase I (2010-2013) and Phase II (2013-2016) has adopted strategic policy for implementation of national electronic government procurement (e-GP) system instead of using individual e-submission system. In this journey of PPMO to streamline public procurement proceeding and modernize the procurement activities through electronic means, Asian Development Bank (ADB) and World Bank (WB) have provided their support to PPMO. In 2011, through the third amendment to the PPR, PPMO was mandated to operate a single national e-GP portal and also clearly stating public entities should carry out their procurement transactions through the single e-GP Portal established by PPMO. So, developing and implementing national e-GP system became the national agenda. This is also complemented through2013/14 budget speech of the government enforcing public entities to use the e-GP system for the procurement above NPR 6 Million (USD 55,000). In 2011, PPMO had conducted a study to envisage the functionality of national e-GP system and make it compatible with international e-GP best practices. The recommendation of this study was to develop a national e-GP system in two phases- Phase I and Phase II. The development of e-GP Phase II was started on September 2013 and completed on December 2015 and it was rolled out for piloting from April 2016 in five major infrastructure departments of the government. PPMO has already scheduled to roll out the system from 1 January 2017 to all the public entities across the country including all local level agencies. This system is the full-fledged e-GP system covering all aspects of procurement from planning to contract management including public procurement management information system (PPMIS). All standard bidding documents (SBDs) of procurement of works, goods, and consulting services issued by PPMO and Single Stage Two Envelope system are integrated in the application. E-GP Phase II is the upgraded version of e-GP Phase I. This system caters all the functionalities of public procurement. e-GP Phase I covers up to bid opening only and e-GP Phase II covers all the functions after bid opening i.e. bid evaluation, contract awarding, contract management, dispute management and payment. At the moment, GON and its various entity are using Phase I and Phase II parallely.


Replicability:

 

The development of e-GP Phase II was started on September 2013 and completed on December 2015 and it was rolled out for piloting from April 2016 in five major infrastructure departments of the government. PPMO has already scheduled to roll out the system from 1 January 2017 to all the public entities across the country including all local level agencies. This system is the full-fledged e-GP system covering all aspects of procurement from planning to contract management including public procurement management information system (PPMIS). All standard bidding documents (SBDs) of procurement of works, goods, and consulting services issued by PPMO and Single Stage Two Envelope system are integrated in the application. E-GP Phase II is the upgraded version of e-GP Phase I. This system caters all the functionalities of public procurement. e-GP Phase I covers up to bid opening only and e-GP Phase II covers all the functions after bid opening i.e. bid evaluation, contract awarding, contract management, dispute management and payment. At the moment, GON and its various entity are using Phase I and Phase II parallely.


Other Background:

 

The Public Procurement Act clearly says that PPMO is the regulatory authority of public procurement and should develop and operate national e-GP system in Nepal. Every public entity should mandatorily use national e-GP system for the procurement above NPR 6 million. Therefore, all the public entities receiving funds from government of Nepal are in scope of e-GP system. Public entities have already started phasing out their own individual e-submission system and come into national e-GP System so the system is already catering most of the public entities in Nepal. And eventually, all the public entities should use national e-GP system for their procurement. Therefore, there is no need to install, manage and operate the system in each public entity;they just have to be registered into the system and use it as per their need. E-GP system is compatible with multilateral development bank's e-tendering guidelines. The joint mission of ADB and WB has already assessed the system. They are satisfied with the system and its functionalities and there is a commitment from those development partners to use national e-GP system for their funded projects. The system is developed based on scalable architecture and international best practices so it can be integrated with other ICT systems.

Attachments:

  Ramesh Kumar sharma_1483001330_0.docx

If the submission requires an official authorization, attach details of the same:

  Ramesh Kumar sharma_1483001330.pdf

 

Submission Place:
Kathmandu

Submission Date:
29 Dec, 2016

Submission By:
Ramesh Kumar sharma

 

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