Pain points in e-Governance – 6 : IT Procurement

 IT Procurement

 Everyone in the field undoubtedly agrees that this is the most painful area. Unlike other procurement, IT procurement is so tricky, a lapse may lead to a head roll and will have a serious impact on project implementation. 

 

 Every Government servant must follow certain principles, which are termed as the canons of financial propriety. While spending,

  1. Exercise the same vigilance as a person of ordinary prudence would exercise in respect of the expenditure of his own money. 
  2. No one should spend to his advantage, 
  3. Expenditure should not be for a person or a community unless a court order or a policy on it.

 

 It is also clearly mentioned that the duty of every Government servant shall not merely to observe complete integrity in financial matters, but also to be constantly watchful to see, that the best possible value is obtained for all public funds spent by him or under his control and to guard scrupulously against every kind of wasteful expenditure from public funds. 

 

 Typical procurement life cycle follows, estimation of required hardware, finalizing specification, cost estimation, getting budgetary approval at various levels, prepare the tender document, host it in eProcurement portal, evaluate the bids, identify the bidders, negotiations, issue work order, contract management, third-party evaluation of the product, monitoring supply, installation and go live, in sequence. 

 

 Keeping in mind the above facts, the very first pain starts at fixing specification, with so many products in the market, generalizing a product description is a daunting task for a committee. Once the proceedings are published, many company product salesmen start accusing the committee that they deliberately left a particular specification in favour of X company and also proclaims that their product is superior to others. Depending on the value of the product, the level of appeals keeps accumulating and by the time decisions are taken, the product will be redundant, considering growing technology. With all these, if tenders are published and by any chance, if the tender document does not consist contract template as a tender document, then it’s tossing of the document between both legal teams. 

 Since most of the goods tender goes with the L1 concept, i.e., whoever quotes low, will get the bids. Most of the times bidders quote less and supply substandard products, if TPA is compromised, then you can imagine. Even though SLA are part of the contract for supply and maintenance, the bidder ensures that the cost of these SLA plus interest rate due to staggered payment etc., are included in the bid amount, which is usually high compared to the market. And hence bidder never bothers with government notices, in case of SLA violations, forcing the government to backlist the bidder, who gets stay order for the same. 

 

 And hence we often witness projects running with outdated machines, applications running on the older version. It may also happen that the application may be ready, hardware may not be supplied. Many times, due to individual tender for the various product for the same project, the components may be delivered at the various timeline and by the time the last component is delivered, the product life of few products delivered earlier may have ended. 

 

 And the vicious cycle continues.

 

Disclaimer: Purely personal opinion. 

 

Procurment

 

 

Comments

  1. Bharat shettyJune 28, 2021 at 7:55 AM

    Very much true..Good to implement in Govt project

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownJune 28, 2021 at 8:05 AM

    Good morning sir

    What you said is true sir, with this writing we came to know the difficulties in implementing and administration in govt. Project.

    R Harikrishna

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownJune 28, 2021 at 8:21 AM

    Really hard procedure and tactic decision to be taken on the part of procurement head sir. Why can't govt have it's own wing of production of equipment needed as per requirement, there are so many technical Institutions to carry out the production, also gives healthy competition for private companies to offer best products and reasonable price

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Prabhakar HLJuly 5, 2021 at 3:36 PM

      Personally i feel government should focus more on policy rather than production.

      Delete
  4. UnknownJune 28, 2021 at 8:53 AM

    BHOJYANAIK
    Good morning, You have told the truth, but with all this govt has to deliver service to the best of it's ability.Public service is God's service

    ReplyDelete
  5. Prabhusince1992June 28, 2021 at 11:27 AM

    True sir.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Krishnaveni MothaJune 28, 2021 at 6:21 PM

    Through GeM portal also central govt offices are procuring through L1 concept which sometimes not accurate process. Unless & until u give solid reason , authorities we I'll not allow u to go for L2 in govt offices. As everyone wants to play safe by following rules even knowing some bidders intentionally quote to get the tender & provide us substandard service.These are all part & parcel of govt system. As u mentioned in last it's big vicious cycle. Totally agree.

    ReplyDelete
  7. ShreyasJune 28, 2021 at 6:35 PM

    Very true sir.

    ReplyDelete
  8. S.M.BhavikattiJune 29, 2021 at 4:24 PM

    Since there are many stages of sanctions and approvals in the Government Sector, the delay occurs. Hence, first the tender document has to be got approved with the then available latest specifications and if there is delay in approval, the file may be moved once again with the whatever little changes w.r.t.latest configuration for approval.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Prabhakar HLJuly 5, 2021 at 3:40 PM

      Correct sir, again it leads to delay. That's why I referred it as vicious cycle.

      Delete

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