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.
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