The new electronic Government Procurement (e-GP) system is not only promising to create efficiency and eliminate corruption, but also
affects other fields.
Other than procurement entities and
suppliers, the new system will make work easier for other state agencies, organisations,
professionals and even the members of the public.
The e-GP, if well implemented, will not only open
all public procurements to the public but will also facilitate easy access to information
and documents.
Treasury explains that e-tendering is the
use of electronic technology to manage the entire tendering process online.
This includes the advertisement of tenders,
submission of bids, evaluation, and awarding of contracts. Use of e-Tendering
processes enhances the efficiency, fairness, and transparency of government
procurement, ensuring that public funds are spent responsibly while promoting
competition among the suppliers or contractors.
E-tendering allows tender processes to be
transparently and consistently initiated and maintained as they progress
through to award.
Contract management encompasses the life
cycle of a contract from creation, implementation, and review, with the goal
of ensuring the parties involved fulfil their contractual obligations.
The e-Contract Management module in the
e-GP system facilitates a procuring entity to maintain an overview and track
procurement contracts in progress, goods supplied, any contract variations,
services rendered, payment processing, administration of advance payments and
performance guarantees, and performance appraisal of the contractors.
“This is why we are changing our procurement mechanism so that we stop theft and corruption that has pervaded our procurement and made it an enterprise for making money and not providing services,” President William Ruto said on Tuesday.
Investigative and oversight agencies like the Ethics
and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC), the Director of Criminal Investigations (DCI), and the Public Procurement Oversight Authority (PPOA) will thus obtain required documents
at the press of a button.
The agencies can also rely on https://egpkenya.go.ke/
portal to monitor, evaluate and identify overlaps or oversights in the procurement
process.
In the past, once such agencies like DCI
and EACC were seized of any matter, they had to write to accounting officers
seeking information about contracts or tendering processes. This, at times, takes
time to be provided.
However, under the new system, all this
information and documents are obtained in the portal that is accessed by the public
as the system prides itself for its transparency and accountability.
“EACC or DCI will no longer be writing to
any procurement entity to request any documents. They just go to the portal
and download whatever they desire,” a head of procurement in one of the government
agencies states.
On the other side, the heads of procurement
say this makes their work easy as they won’t be under pressure from their
bosses (CEOs, PSs, CSs or powerful forces) to manipulate tender documents and thus
irregularly award contracts.
For the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), access to the portal will provide details of companies/traders, the number of
contracts awarded, and payments already received for purposes of assessing tax
liabilities.
This means that tax evasion
will be greatly reduced as only tax-compliant firms can be awarded contracts.
For bidders, the open nattier of the system
means that documents will not disappear and thus lock them out unfairly.
Last
week, Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi said that the habit where a certain
document, such as a tax compliance certificate, is plucked off the file and thus used
to lock out a bidder will no longer happen.
For litigants, persons filing procurement-related cases in court, who may not be going the longer route which at times requires
court orders to access documents to support their cases, the portal will be
their port of call.
The public, including
journalists, can also rely on the portal to get all documents or information
they require in exercise of their rights under Article 35 of the Constitution on
access to information.
National Treasury says it maintains an Open
Contracting Data Standards (OCDS), where a data standard that has been designed to
facilitate the publication and analysis of data and documents related to all
stages of a contracting process.
“The e-GP system has been developed using
OCDS to ensure procurement processes are more transparent and also facilitate
business intelligence, analysis, data sharing, and monitoring. This will assist
policy makers and procurement practitioners to improve value for money,
integrity, fairness, and performance of public contracts.”
By the time of writing this article, a
total 16,045 suppliers had been registered in the portal, 1,464 procurement
entities and 63 tenders uploaded.
However, no single contract has been awarded even
as the first quarter of the new financial year closed on Tuesday.
Section 2 of the Public Procurement and
Asset Disposal Act, 2015 (the Act) defines a procuring entity as a public
entity making a procurement or asset disposal to which the Act applies.
Regulation 24 of the Public Procurement and
Asset Disposal Regulations (PPADR), 2020 provides for the minimum requirements
for a procuring entity to be able to make corporate decisions and, for purposes
of internal controls, ensure segregated responsibilities.
Regulation 54 of the PPADR, 2020 stipulates
that the National Treasury shall ensure that all procuring entities are
registered in the e-GP system and that they have their respective facilities
to carry out different activities.
These include initiating the procurement process, Annual
procurement plan preparation, Procurement document preparation, Evaluation,
professional opinion and Contract award.
Others include contract management, Internal procurement
process workflow management, tracking payments, deliverables, and other
processes through the available features and modules of the e-GP system.
The National Treasury will be responsible
for registering all procuring entities in the e-GP system, as well as Cabinet
Secretaries, Chairpersons of a Board/Commission, Accounting Officers, and Heads
of Procurement/Supply Chain functions of a procuring entity.
The Head of Procurement, who is the
Procuring Entity e-GP System Administrator, shall register all procuring entity
users in the e-GP system.
All procuring entity e-GP users MUST have
authorisation letters from their accounting officers to perform pre-defined
e-GP system roles.
