Electronic Innovations for More Transparency and Efficiency of Public Procurement (GE0056)

Electronic innovations for more transparency and efficiency of Public Procurement; Transparent public procurement and increasing the level of accountability, elimination of geographic barreers and rising competitiveness in this process is a permanent priority of the Government of Georgia. To achieve this objective, the State Procurement Agency plans to introduce the following innovative projects: Component 1 – Aggregated data on tenders: Starting from December 2010, tenders on public procurement are held only through a unified electronic system (procurement.gov.ge) of public procurement. Around 36000 tenders are announced through this system and this number, as well as many other data tends to increase. The mentioned trend complicates the accumulation and analisis process of information on particular procurement object or tender for the stakeholders. Aggregation of tender data in one space will make the following data easily accessible: - Data on procurement objects, tender types, number of bidders, potential and contract values of a tender, winning bidders, number of disqualified bidders, etc.; - Annual data (data will be located in the machine-readable format (CSV, JSON, XML)). Aggregated data on tender in a new format will allow contracting authorities, interested organizations to participate in public procurement, start-ups and representatives of small businesses and NGO sector to fully analyze the state of the market and make business forecasts. Component 2 - Aggregated data on annual plans of public procurement: Public procurement is carried out in compliance with pre-defined annual procurement plans, registered in the unified electronic system of public procurement – e-Plan module by contracting authority . As for stakeholders, they currently have access only to general information about the annual plan. The planned changes in the electronic module will allow the customer to obtain detailed information on the annual procurement of each procuring organization, and consolidate information on the planned public procurement according to the regions and price. As a result, the representatives of the business sector will have a unique opportunity to obtain information on scheduled procurement, its price and location (region) by one or more entities among 4469 procuring organizations registered in the e-Procurement system by using a CPV code. Additionally, the publication of a list of top procurement objects and their total amount is planned on the official webpage of the public procurement. These innovations will enable better assessment of the market requirements and better planning of the future activities of the business representatives. Component 3 – E-catalogue on the procurement objects and economic operators (e-Market): Establishment of the estimated value of the procurement object is preceded by a market researchconducted by the contracting authorities, which is important for both arranging a concrete tender objectively, and for correctly defining the annual procurement budget while developing the annual plan. Hence, elaboration of an electronic catalogue for key procurement products is recommended, which will: - objectively reflect the market prices; - accumulate prices of various products by economic operators; - reflect information on economic operatorscountrywide, as well as regionwide; etc. This innovation will allow the agencies to plan procurement more efficiently and obtain information on the market prices, economic operators, and conditions in a short period of time at the publicprocurement preparation stage. Maximum data openness will help the procuring agencies to define correctly the estimated price of the procurement object, which will reduce the risks of setting high prices bycontracting authorities, corruption and failed tenders. Introduction of innovations envisaged by these three components ensures transparency, elimination of geographic inequality, enhancement of anticorruption endeavor and support to business in the public procurement process countrywide. Date ofImplementation: 2016-2017; Issues to be Addressed: - Existing information on conducted tenders is extensive; searching and analising of which is long and tedious process; - Information on annual procurement plan of the contracting authoritiesis not well-detailed ; - There is no E-catalogue on the procurement objects and economic operators , which would give current market value of key procurement products. Contracting authoritiesare not provided with unbiased information, which would allow them to define estimated cost of a procurement object. Main Objective: - Ensure more flexibility of the public procurement process for customers including the representatives of contracting authoritiesand business sector; - Support business and increase competition in the publicprocurement process; - Increase participation of citizens and civil organizations both on the central and local level in the monitoring of budget resource spending.

15. Electronic innovations for more transparency and efficiency of public procurement

Commitment Text:

Transparent public procurement and increasing the level of accountability, elimination of geographic barriers and rising competitiveness in this process is a permanent priority of the Government of Georgia. To achieve this objective, the State Procurement Agency plans to introduce the following innovative projects:

Component 1 – Aggregated data on tenders: Starting from December 2010, tenders on public procurement are held only through a unified electronic system (procurement.gov.ge) of public procurement. Around 36000 tenders are announced through this system and this number, as well as many other data tends to increase. The mentioned trend complicates the accumulation and analysis process of information on particular procurement object or tender for the stakeholders.

Aggregation of tender data in one space will make the following data easily accessible:

• Data on procurement objects, tender types, number of bidders, potential and contract values of a tender, winning bidders, number of disqualified bidders, etc.;
• Annual data (data will be located in the machine-readable format (CSV, JSON, XML)).

Aggregated data on tender in a new format will allow contracting authorities, interested organizations to participate in public procurement, start-ups and representatives of small businesses and NGO sector to fully analyze the state of the market and make business forecasts.

Component 2 – Aggregated data on annual plans of public procurement: Public procurement is carried out in compliance with pre-defined annual procurement plans, registered in the unified electronic system of public procurement – e-Plan module by contracting authority. As for stakeholders, they currently have access only to general information about the annual plan. The planned changes in the electronic module will allow the customer to obtain detailed information on the annual procurement of each procuring organization, and consolidate information on the planned public procurement according to the regions and price. As a result, the representatives of the business sector will have a unique opportunity to obtain information on scheduled procurement, its price and location (region) by one or more entities among 4469 procuring organizations registered in the e-Procurement system by using a CPV code. Additionally, the publication of a list of top procurement objects and their total amount is planned on the official webpage of the public procurement. These innovations will enable better assessment of the market requirements and better planning of the future activities of the business representatives.

Component 3 – E-catalogue on the procurement objects and economic operators (e-Market):  Establishment of the estimated value of the procurement object is preceded by a market research conducted by the contracting authorities, which is important for both arranging a concrete tender objectively, and for correctly defining the annual procurement budget while developing the annual plan.

Hence, elaboration of an electronic catalogue for key procurement products is recommended, which will:

• objectively reflect the market prices;
• accumulate prices of various products by economic operators;
• reflect information on economic operators countrywide, as well as regionwide; etc.

This innovation will allow the agencies to plan procurement more efficiently and obtain information on the market prices, economic operators, and conditions in a short period of time at the public procurement preparation stage. Maximum data openness will help the procuring agencies to define correctly the estimated price of the procurement object, which will reduce the risks of setting high prices by contracting authorities, corruption and failed tenders.

Introduction of innovations envisaged by these three components ensures transparency, elimination of geographic inequality, enhancement of anticorruption endeavor and support to business in the public procurement process countrywide.

Responsible institution: LELP – State Procurement Agency

Supporting institution(s): LELP – National Agency of Public Registry

Start date: June 2016 End date: December 2017

Commitment Aim:

To comply with open contracting requirements and to allow for deeper analysis of available procurement data, the State Procurement Agency (SPA) committed to publishing aggregated data on tenders, annual plans of procuring agencies, and the estimated value of each procurement object in open data format. The commitment specifically aimed to:

• Publish data on procurement objects, tender types, the number of bidders, potential and actual values of tender contracts, winning bidders, and number of disqualified bidders;
• Publish the aforementioned data annually in CSV, JSON, and XML formats;
• Publish detailed information on the annual procurement plans of each procuring agency, and categorize this information by regions and price; and
• Publish a list of top procurement products and their total amount on the SPA’s official public procurement platform. This includes the estimated market prices of those products and information on their producers.

Status

Midterm: Limited

By the midterm, the commitment had limited implementation as the aggregated data on tenders (component 1) and annual procurement plans of public agencies (component 2) were not published in open data format. The SPA conducted research and a workshop on Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS), developed an action plan, and worked on the implementation together with World Bank experts.

The third component of the commitment, an e-Market module, was launched in the Fall of 2016. The module contained information about suppliers, their products, prices, warranty terms, and shipment locations. The SPA planned to promote this new module on its Facebook page as well as during meetings with stakeholders. For more information, please see the 2016–2017 IRM midterm report.

End of term: Substantial

The commitment was substantially implemented by the end of term. In August 2017, the SPA launched a separate webpage containing aggregated data on tenders, published in JSON format. As of October 2018, this webpage included the following information for about 248,154 tenders: the number, type, dates, completion status, and potential value of tenders as well as the names and ID codes of winning bidders and procuring entities. [53] However, the SPA did not update the e-Plan module, which includes annual purchase plans of procuring entities, to integrate it with its new open data format and to make the available data more accessible to public. As of October 2018, the e-Plan module continued to be hosted by the SPA’s main webpage. It contains 23,734 data entries on annual procurement plans of procuring entities, specifically data on the procurement object, type of tender, its potential value, sources of financing, and the responsible person for the data provided. [54] Finally, the SPA continued to update the pre-existing e-Market module with the information about suppliers, their products, prices, warranty terms, and the shipment location. [55]

Did It Open Government?

Access to Information: Marginal

The government publishes its procurement tenders on a unified electronic portal, procurement.gov.ge, which contains a large amount of data on tenders and beyond and requires opening multiple pages to access the data. By launching a separate portal containing aggregated and more detailed data on tenders and in open data format, the government has shown its commitment to complying with open contracting requirements to make the tender data more easily accessible to citizens. Since September 2017, the SPA has shared information about its new web-portal, http://www.opendata.spa.ge with beneficiaries of the state procurement system using social media, newsletters, and annual reports, as well as trainings and events organized by different agencies. However, CSOs remain critical of the fact that the SPA’s new open data portals have not been promoted to the wider public and that only a handful of stakeholders engaged actively in monitoring the public procurement processes are aware of their existence. Furthermore, CSOs think that the aggregated tender data contains insufficient filters to allow for deeper analysis of the content. The data is not linked to other related databases, and some important details about sub-contractors are missing. Further, as the data is in JSON format, regular users are not able to access it without special computer software. The stakeholders suggest the SPA consider publishing data in CSV format instead. Finally, the SPA does not provide an Application Programming Interface (API) to interested organizations to link their portals, such as tendermonitor.ge, to the new SPA webpage. [56] Based on the aforementioned findings, the IRM researcher assesses this commitment as having a marginal impact on improving access to information in the public procurement field.

Carried Forward?

The commitment was carried into the new Action Plan 2018−2019. Under Commitment 13 in the new action plan, the SPA plans to integrate the e-Plan module and annual procurement plans of procuring entities into the new database of aggregated tenders at http://opendata.spa.ge/#/, and to publish this data in open data format. They also commit to publishing more details on the tenders, adding more filters for deeper analysis, and updating this data on a regular basis. Finally, the SPA plans to provide an API to registered users of its new open data portal and redesign the portal to align it better with the open contracting data standard. [57] For their part, stakeholders recommended the government limit the number of exemptions from the e-procurement system and to introduce a ceiling on the value of tenders that can be processed under simplified procurement rules while imposing additional regulations for tenders that exceed this maximum. This would help prevent corruption and further increase transparency of the public procurement system.

[54] State Procurement Agency, e-Plan module, are available at: https://bit.ly/1JBkNSe.

[55] State Procurement Agency, e-Market module, are available at: https://bit.ly/2O80VAj.

[56] Sandro Kevkhishvili (Analyst/Editor at Institute for Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI)), interview with IRM researcher, 21 Aug. 2018.

[57] Government of Georgia, Georgia Action Plan 2018-2019, Commitment 13 (OGP, 4 Dec. 2018), https://www.opengovpartnership.org/documents/georgia-action-plan-2018-2019.