I didn't know about this new e-procurement portal launched last year by the state government. Have a look here (site isn't setup right, watch the warnings). What should interest us most is "transparency". There is a section intended for "citizens", cool! But the citizen's page doesn't have much right now. A list of tenders is available, which shows up only two items. There is a news and information link too, but that leads to a third party commercial website.
So who is doing the work and whats the scope? Thankfully, there is a notification on the site telling us about it. The website is part of an e-procurement platform project that was awarded to HP India back in July 2006.
Does anyone know more about this project? Does anyone know G Sathyavathy, who has signed the notification as CEO for center of e-governance for GoK?. Either way, how about we go meet him to know more, and check their plans on 'transparency' front - the promising "citizens" page! I can try organize a meeting if there is enough interest.
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procuring portals
tenderwizard and this?
Right Tarle, I think you are remembering this past post (following sarkaari projects). Tendwerwizard seems to be still there, however, notice that there is real data for BESCOM tenders, whereas BDA doesn't seem to be using it (no real data in tenderwizard, only 1 tender?).
From what I understand of these jargons, E-tendering aims to simplify (make paperless) and make transparent the paperwork involved in tendering process. So government agencies can do things like sell tenders, receive bids, evaluate bids, award the contract, even conduct auctions in online and paperless way. But e-procurement covers the whole process ("life cycle") of purchasing. It could begin with e-tendering, and end with receipt of goods or services. It also covers "off-contract" purchases.
But, text on tenderwizard says they cover the entire procurement cycle: quote - "Tender Wizard is an exclusive, most vibrant end to end solution for buying / selling of products and services through tendering process".
So there could be some overlap. Any egovernance experts or insiders here to explain this better? All we care about here is, how do we use these new systems to get transparency and tracking of public work?
procurements
no interest?
Trying to setup an electronic mechanism to follow public works executed by local government agencies would be such a dream come true for us. Hard and impossible thing to expect, but come on let 5-6 of us at least try to meet some babus to understand how hard would this be.
I am thinking of lobbying for RSS feeds on tenderwizard and eprocurement site. And perhaps, a search engine support on these sites - to look up a tender, and its progress. Simple things help to make a beginning
Transparency in E-Procurement
SB - sorry for the delay.
Very correct & highly desirable - but I beleive there is no law or statute that requires them to publish all tender processes - do you know of any law that requires BBMP & other agencies to announce the award of all tenders & the reasons for awarding them ? This initiative apparently started to make the then govt appear citizen-friendly, but fizzled out in the quagmire of political uncertainties following it.
I think BMRC is the only institution that implicitly beleives in the virtues of transparency to justify the colossal expend of public finances - & they have been highly successful, thus far (echoing DMRC's success).
Another obstacle is RTI - vested interests will always point to it & state that if one is interested, he should file an RTI - thus, the need for voluntary disclosure becomes somewhat diluted.
In the absence of any requirement, such initiatives will always die a natural death, unless citizens push hard for it - I am open to what you suggest.
eprocurement site in news
What timing. I discovered eprocurement couple of weeks ago, and saw this in Hindu yesterday - talks about Karnataka government seeing early benefits of e-procurement system.
"Six months after the Karnataka Government began to automate its procurement processes, the first gains have become visible: total transaction times reduced by 40 per cent; unsuccessful bidders getting their earnest money back swiftly ..."
Read "State's e-buy initiative ..." for more. The report mentions Mr Ajay Seth, Secretary (e-governance) and Mr Sudhir Krishna, Principal Secretary, Public Works and more. So we know who to go meet if we want RSS feeds from this e-procurement website :)