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7th Global Procurement Summit (GPS 2022)

AIMA organised its 7th Global Procurement Summit 2022 in hybrid mode on 7th – 8th March 2022 at New Delhi on the theme ‘Convergence of Public and Private Sectors to maximize value through Green and Innovative Procurement’. The summit was held in partnership with the Ministry of Finance, Government of India and the World Bank. Asian Development Bank, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, FIDIC and United Nations Industrial Development Organisation were the other partners.

Mr Pankaj Choudhary, Minister of State for Finance, Government of India was the chief guest of the programme. Mr C K Ranganathan, President, AIMA and Chairman & Managing Director, CavinKare Pvt Ltd delivered the welcome address and the introductory remarks were given by Ms Rekha Sethi, Director General, AIMA. Mr Junaid Kamal Ahmad, Country Director-India, World Bank and Mr Hoe Yun Jeong, Deputy Country Director, Asian Development Bank delivered the special address.

Some of the other eminent speakers included Mr Sanjay Aggarwal, Advisor, Procurement Policy Division, Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, Government of India; Ms Caroline Nicholas, Head, Technical Assistance Section, International Trade Law Division (UNCITRAL Secretariat), United Nations Office of Legal Affairs; Mr K C Jha, Advisor, Business Function & Integration, Government e-Marketplace, Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Government of India; Mr Malcolm Harrison, Group Chief Executive Officer, Charted Institute of Procurement & Supply; Mr Karma Wangdi, Head of Public Procurement, Royal Government of Bhutan; Mr Nicolas Penagos, Head of MAPS Secretariat, OECD; Mr Samuel Praveen Kumar, Joint Secretary Department of Agricultural & Farmers Welfare, Ministry of Agriculture; Mr Adrian Torres, Chief of Public-Private Partnership, ADB; Mr Jeffery Taylor, Director, Procurement Division 1, Procurement, Portfolio and Financial Management Department, Asian Development Bank; Mr Rajkiran Kanagala, Senior VP & Group Head, Emerging Businesses and Head, SAARC & Chemical Vertical, TCI Group; Mr Charles Callanan, Director, Bangladesh Multi-Country Office (BDMCO), United Nations Office for Project Services; Ms. Ann E Ottosen, Senior Manager, Vaccine Centre, UNICEF Supply Division; Dr Nelson Ogunshakin, CEng, FICE, FREng, OBE, Chief Executive, FIDIC; Mr Chuan Wee Meng, CEO, Singapore International Mediation Centre; Mr Jeremy Glover, President, Dispute Resolution Board Foundation Region 2 Board of Directors; Mr K Venkata Ramana, Vice President, Contracts & Legal, Tata Projects Limited; Dr René Van Berkel, UNIDO Representative & Head, Regional Office in India; Dr Shailly Kedia, Senior Fellow & Associate Director, (Sustainable Development and Outreach Division), The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI); Ms Elmas Arisoy, Regional Procurement Manager (South Asia), Solution and Innovation in Procurement, The World Bank amongst others. (read more)

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Fragile and conflict-affected states: the role of the public sector as an employer

Editor's note: This blog post is part of a series for the 'Bureaucracy Lab', a World Bank initiative to better understand the world's public officials. Read the last blog on gender in the public sector.

Currently around 1.8 billion people live in fragile, and conflict affected (FCV) environments. By 2030, the World Bank estimates that 2/3 of the world’s extreme poor will live in FCV situations. The COVID-19 pandemic further threatens to reverse decades of development. By 2022, the average GDP for countries affected by FCV is expected to be 8.6% below pre-pandemic projections. Addressing conflict and fragility, with an emphasis on prevention and prompt action is important to the success of the bank’s twin mandate of poverty reduction and shared prosperity.

As WDR 2011 report on conflict, security, and fragility emphasized effective public institutions, fostering accountability, enhancing service delivery, and promoting citizen engagement are necessary in addressing the drivers of fragility. However, interventions aimed at public sector reforms are difficult to implement. Every step within the reform process is highly political, as public sector workers represent a significantly large, often unionized, group that is at the center of most peace-building negotiations. The lack of a well-staffed and well-paid public workforce not only impacts the quality of social service provision, but weakens institutional protections against rent-seeking and corruption. An evidence-based understanding of the organization and compensation of the public sector workforce is, therefore, an important first ingredient into developing reform strategies that are politically mendable, fiscally sustainable, and analytically sound. This blog presented some insights into the nature of the public sector workforce in FCV contexts and aims to provide some empirical measures of state capacity and equity in FCV environments. (read more)

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To boost government productivity, policy makers should focus on the workforce first

Human resources policies are at the center of any effort to increase government productivity. That’s why Singapore is focusing its efforts to improve efficiency on the workforce and how it carries out the business of government.

To respond to crises, and even to a world of constant change, the Singapore Public Service continuously seeks to be more competent and ready to face the future by being more proactive and forward-looking.

The government workforce of the future

In Singapore, agility, flexibility, and relevance are being built into the government workforce. A productive government gives its workers tools to respond to new challenges and deliver services effectively (for example, investments into digital transformation and Artificial Intelligence). The government must also have the ability to adapt to changing needs and contexts while remaining close to citizens. Thus, High Tech, yet remaining High Touch.

To do this, investing in training and continuous retraining of the government workforce and providing workers with future skills is crucial. Furthermore, there is a clear and constant need to innovate and to encourage the workforce to challenge the status quo, push boundaries, and use more initiatives. This can only be accomplished if bureaucratic red tape is minimized. The overarching goal is to increase productivity by achieving the fullest potential of the workforce, while ensuring its mental well-being.

Technology and people

How does this happen in practice? There are two ingredients to realizing the full potential of government productivity gains: a focus on technology and a focus on people. Digital transformation is a central way to achieve greater efficiency, by cutting time needed to accomplish tasks, making delivering government services cost effective, always citizen centric and more intuitive, while cutting back on red tape.

One way of looking to the future is by adopting the “Smart Nation” approach, a strategy centered around digitalization and digital government services. Examples include one-stop applications that deliver services to citizens, such as Life SG, Parents Gateway and OneService. This all points to a workforce that is both “high tech” and “high touch,” as the citizens’ needs are at the center of any new practices. (continue reading)

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How to make governments more productive in the post-COVID world: Lessons from Brazil

COVID-19 has been the greatest – and in many ways the most brutal – accelerator of digital transformation in history, with profound consequences for the private and public sectors.

The economic fallout of the pandemic has put enormous pressures on public finances. But rather than get bogged down in the polarizing debate about fiscal policies, the smart response is to focus on productivity gains that contribute to greater fiscal space regardless of the underlying policies to raise revenues or reign in spending.

The recovery from the pandemic will also likely remain uneven, and governments need to be more proactive than ever to support the recovery process. This requires raising the productivity of the public sector through capacity development, adopting active change management approaches and balancing local context demands with global innovation.

Good public policies are by definition, determined by local context. All countries might be on the same page when faced with the impact of the pandemic, but initial contexts are very different.

In Brazil, for example, the response of the federal government was uneven at the outbreak of the pandemic. Even so, the government was able to capitalize on newly initiated technologies to respond to the public’s increased demand for online services. Conecte SUS, a platform that has the potential to store all Brazilians’ health data, was only introduced in late 2019. When COVID-19 began, the platform’s IT department developed a contingency plan and restructured a compulsory web-based notification system that also offered telemedicine for immediate patient care. In less than four months, TeleSUS made 7.4 million calls. This helped improve communication between health care workers and the population at a crucial time and improved public service delivery. Clearly, there was a need for such a product in Brazil.(read more)

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To get better development outcomes, donors must align with countries’ public financial management systems

Development projects can achieve better outcomes with fewer resources when donors work together at the country level. That is the conclusion of the Fiduciary Alignment Initiative, a joint Asian Development Bank (ADB)-World Bank seminar held in Bangladesh recently that focused on the use of country fiduciary systems in aid programs.

The seminar echoed the results of a World Bank study, which found that setting up parallel public financial management systems for projects cost four donors (Gavi, Global Fund, UNICEF and World Bank) $1.2 billion in the health sector alone from 2011 to 2016. That money could instead have been invested in programs to achieve better health outcomes.

Fiduciary systems are the institutions and processes in a country that allow transparent and accountable use of public and donor funds. They include the country’s budget, procurement and financial reporting frameworks, as well as supreme audit institutions, all of which are collectively referred to as a country’s Public Financial Management (PFM) systems.

Relying on these national systems for development projects means channeling donor funds through the government budget, utilizing national procurement, accounting and reporting rules, and relying on supreme audit institutions for project audits. By using country systems, development partners have an opportunity to identify gaps, engage in a dialogue with government counterparts and strengthen capacity to make those systems more robust and reliable in the long term. These positive effects will improve development outcomes and promote transparency and accountability.

https://www.indiaprocurement.in/blog/to-get-better-development-outcomes-donors-must-align-with-countries-public-financial-management-systems

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How framework agreements are useful for emergency and pandemic response

The phase that follows an emergency situation is critical when government agencies are under pressure to respond quickly and effectively to people’s needs. This includes procurement and supply of various essential items while ensuring that quick responses do not increase risks beyond what policymakers have defined as acceptable. The newly released Guidebook for Setting-up and Operating Framework Agreements shows that these agreements been proven to be very useful in such situations.

The emergency framework agreement can encompass basic goods and services that are likely to be used in response to a serious emergency. For example, it can include essential drugs and medical supplies, emergency housing, fuel, mattresses, blankets, food and water. Having the framework agreement (FA) will enable procurement units to issue purchase orders against the agreement within minutes of an emergency. The experience of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) shows that purchasing goods through a FA is more effective in securing the right price, and guaranteeing the quality, quantity and delivery terms.(read more)

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A new tool to track how countries use exclusion to promote integrity and achieve best value

Exclusion is a tool commonly available to governments to protect their procurement systems from fraudulent or corrupt suppliers and reduce performance risk. But despite the prevalence of this mechanism – which has many labels, including “debarment,” “disqualification,” “suspension,” and “blacklisting” – little research has been done to identify proven methodologies and best practices.

We are therefore pleased to present the Global Suspension & Debarment Directory, the first ever consultative resource on exclusion systems. The Directory serves as a resource for anyone interested in learning how the covered countries and organizations employ exclusion. Using data captured through the 2020 Global Suspension & Debarment Survey, the Directory summarizes the exclusion systems of 23 different jurisdictions and institutions and includes references and available links to the relevant laws and regulations.    

The Directory presents information on six key areas for each exclusion system surveyed:

Government-Wide Legal and Institutional Framework

Functioning and Enforcement of the Government-Wide Exclusion System

Substantive Grounds for Government-Wide Exclusion

Scope and Effect of Government-Wide Exclusion

Government-Wide Transparency: The Exclusion List

Limited Scope Exclusion Systems

To accompany the Directory, an interactive database has been launched for users to sort and compare specific aspects of the included systems, access relevant resources for each jurisdiction, and download individual summaries from the full Directory.

The inaugural Directory revealed several interesting findings. First, our research confirmed the prevalence of exclusion systems across many countries and institutions. Indeed, only one of the 23 jurisdictions included in the Directory did not have any type of government-wide exclusion framework at the national level. Second, almost all jurisdictions included in the Directory provide an opportunity for the accused supplier to respond to or challenge the basis for its exclusion.

But, as they say, the devil is in the details. While accused suppliers generally have an opportunity to respond, the timing of this opportunity varies widely and does not always come before the exclusion takes effect. (read more)

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Countries in the MENA region and especially those in the Gulf have long run large public sectors. As part of the social contract, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) governments have provided free health care, education, social security benefits, and subsidized housing and utilities to their citizens.

In addition, citizens have been quasi-guaranteed well-paid public sector jobs. This has kept unemployment rates low (especially within the context of traditionally low labor force participation rates among Gulf citizens) and ensured a high degree of social development and cohesion. For example, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO), Qatar (0.1%), Oman (1.8%), Kuwait (2.2%) and UAE (2.2%) unemployment rates are among the lowest in the world.

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GeM the way forward towards developing India's marketplace.

GeM portal the e-procurement platform by Government of India launched in August 2016, for online procurement of goods and services by central and state government organizations. The initial version of GeM portal was developed and hosted by Directorate General of Supplies and Disposals (DGS&D) under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry with technical support of National E-Governance Division (NeGD), Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. Later it was decided to hand over the GeM Portal for its development and maintenance to a Managed Service Provider (MSP) which would be led by Intellect design. (more)

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Infrastructure maintenance: Among G20 top priorities

An unexpected topic at July’s G20 Finance Track ministerial meeting Though it went almost unnoticed by the media, something remarkable occurred at the July G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meeting in Venice: the endorsement of a G20 Policy Agenda on Infrastructure Maintenance. Indeed, maintenance itself tends to be invisible when it works well, only to become newsworthy when failure or disasters strike. The Italian G20 Presidency showed boldness and leadership when it proposed that infrastructure maintenance be included among its priorities for 2021. In fact, this issue may seem too technical to claim a spot on the agenda of Finance Ministries and Central Banks. On the contrary, the endorsed Policy Agenda embraces the idea that there is much more to maintenance than just the wide range of activities aimed at keeping the infrastructure/asset in serviceable condition.

In a nutshell, the G20 calls for a shift in perspective: it invites us to look at spending on infrastructure maintenance not just as the cost of keeping assets in good order, but rather as an investment yielding significant benefits both in the short and long term.(more)

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Scaling up PPPs by engaging impact investing charities and foundations

Unfortunately, once due diligence is under way, it becomes apparent that the lifecycle costs of some highly beneficial infrastructure public private partnerships (PPPs) in developing countries are simply too high or returns too low or uncertain (vis-à-vis project risk) to attract enough capital from private investors and lenders.

When I first joined the International Finance Corporation (IFC), projects needing concessional grants or funding to bring down their construction or operating costs or support their revenues were strongly discouraged, primarily because the implicit subsidies were considered to distort the market. Investments in which philanthropic entities were prepared to invest alongside IFC and its affiliates but take on more risk (for example, be subordinated to other investors’ investments) or require lower or later returns than other investors were also rare—and considered suspect. There was a legitimate concern that IFC not be subsidized by donors and other investors.

One energy PPP project I worked on in Tajikistan involved sovereign concessional loans and sovereign grant funding to support a “lifeline” tariff for users who could not afford the cost of the power. Yet, these kinds of projects were one-off and required significant soul searching and time for IFC to pursue and implement. They also often drew criticism for their not-fully commercial structures.

Concerns over market distortions remain legitimate. They can be a cause of projects not being able to be pursued on a fully commercial basis, or the result of projects done with concessional funds. And there are other concerns in countries striving to host thriving private sector economies such as transparency, access to information and concessional support, and governance. Fortunately, over the last two decades, the international development community has recognized the power of mobilizing the considerable concessional resources dedicated to alleviating poverty and boosting prosperity in markets that do not enjoy a perfect competitive environment. IFC has become a leader in evaluating the issues relevant to blending concessional and private commercial capital.(continue reading)

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GovTech in the age of COVID: Urgent need and uneven progress

The COVID-19 pandemic isolated many at home and disrupted the normal operation of governments around the world. The crisis exposed the urgency of adopting the latest technology to promote simple, efficient and transparent governing, centered around the needs of citizens.

GovTech – the use of the latest technology to modernize the public sector -- has great potential to deliver on the promises of the digital age by improving core government systems and services to citizens . A new report, The GovTech Maturity Index: The State of Public Sector Digital Transformation, provides a comprehensive review of how far 198 nations have come and still need to go. The study specifies areas for improvement so that policy makers and their advisers can make informed decisions on how to tackle specific challenges to advance public sector modernization. Practitioners will also be able to use it as a resource to design new digital transformation projects.

The GovTech Maturity Index provides a global snapshot of GovTech maturity, along with a diverse set of good practice examples and entry points for enhancing technology. It is a composite index that uses 48 key indicators and is comprised of four sub-indices:

The core government systems index (CGSI) captures the key aspects of a whole-of-government approach, including government cloud, enterprise architecture and integrated financial management information systems.

The public service delivery index (PSDI) uses existing data from the UN Online Service Index as well as new indicators on online portals, e-filing services, e-payment capabilities, among others.

The citizen engagement index (CEI) measures aspects of public participation platforms, citizen feedback mechanisms, open data and open government portals.

Finally, the GovTech enablers index (GTEI) captures strategy, institutions, laws and regulations, as well as digital skills, and innovation policies and programs, to foster GovTech. All data at the economy level can be found in the GovTech dataset.

The 198 economies were grouped into four categories based on their GTMI score, from A (GovTech leaders) to D (minimal focus on GovTech).(continue reading)

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E-procurement Technology-enabled Procurement

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Countries in the MENA region and especially those in the Gulf have long run large public sectors. As part of the social contract, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) governments have provided free health care, education, social security benefits, and subsidized housing and utilities to their citizens.

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A good practice is not only a practice that is good, but a practice that has been proven to work well. Tested and validated, in the broad sense, which has been repeated and deserves to be shared so that a greater number of people can adopt it.

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India Procurement advertisement section enables to use the portal to advertise their programmes, events and reach out to relevant people and visitors of India Procurement Portal.

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