BPP TACKLING CORRUPTION AT ITS SOURCE. Bureau of Public Procurement Competition I Transparency I Efficiency. PHASE I: Deployment of goidm

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1 BPP Bureau of Public Procurement Competition I Transparency I Efficiency TACKLING CORRUPTION AT ITS SOURCE PHASE I: Deployment of goidm (ICT Infrastructure and Data Centre Model) PHASE II: Development and deployment of goprs (Public Procurement Review Software)

2 Challenges of Public Procurement Corruption Tackling Corruption at its Source: The Bureau of Public Procurement in Nigeria Public Procurement is a large part of any country s economy, independent of the country s geographical location, political inclination or level of development. Procurement is one of the fundamental links in the supply chain of any organization. If this link is not managed efficiently and effectively, serious downstream challenges abound. In 2004, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reported that public procurement was a central area of spending where corruption stakes were high and that public procurement represented over 80% of the world s merchandise and commercial services. Public procurement is the function of government that is most prone to corruption, particularly in developing countries, where there is insufficient transparency and competition. Corruption in public procurement takes place at each stage of the procurement process. From the early stages of procurement planning to contract implementation, the procurement process is rife with opportunities for corruption, with evidence suggesting that in environments characterized by a lack of transparency and high monitoring costs, bribery plays a critical role in determining which firms win public contracts. According to Transparency International, the losses associated with public procurement bribery are estimated to exceed $400 billion per year worldwide. Nigeria has lost several hundred billion Naira over the last decade due to flagrant abuse of procedures for the award of public contracts, inflation of contracts, lack of transparency, lack of competence-based evaluation, and lack of merit, which is the fundamental criteria for the awarding of public contracts. This finding has made urgent reform of the procurement system an imperative if Nigeria is to reduce the large scale corruption and waste that has reduced the efficiency of the Nigerian public sector. These reasons brought about the birth of Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) in >>

3 International Response to Public Procurement Corruption The Nigerian Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) plays a significant role in ensuring efficient and integrity-based monitoring of the implementation of all Federal Government capital projects. The mission of BPP is to establish an open, transparent and competitive federal procurement system that is integration-driven, upholds spending within appropriations and ensures speedy delivery of projects, thus achieving value for money without sacrificing quality and standards. This mission will be difficult to achieve without deployment of a Databank Management System (public procurement review software and adequate ICT infrastructure). Such a system will assist BPP in ensuring strict compliance with openness, competition, cost accuracy rules and procedures that should guide contract awards within the Federal Government of Nigeria. Therefore any improvements in the public procurement system are expected to have a direct and beneficial effect on the overall economic situation of the country. For a proper study of the process of public procurement, knowledge of the public procurement laws of a country is very essential. But public procurement is not confined within the limits of a country as there are many goods and services which are not available locally and thus cannot be domestically procured. Therefore, public procurement bodies need to have access to the international business world. Efforts have also been made by several international organizations to help countries in updating, modernizing or elaborating instruments relating to public procurement. The aim is to ensure efficient, economic, transparent and fair procurement practices. These efforts are as follows: 1. Model laws on procurement of goods, construction and services of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL); 2. The Plurilateral Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA) of the World Trade Organization (WTO); 3. Procurement Procedures under the World Bank; 4. The United Nations Convention against corruption (UNCAC) initiated by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC); 5. European Union Directives on Public Procurement; 6. Regional Arrangements, such as: a. North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Procurement Rules b. Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Transparency Standards on Government Procurement c. The Integrity and Anti-Corruption Initiatives of the African Development Bank d. African Union Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption

4 The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has successfully developed advanced solutions to help combat and fight the menace of corruption at the Information Technology level. For this particular case of Public Procurement, UNODC has designed goprs and goidm to help unify international and national efforts to combat public procurement corruption. Public Procurement Review Software (goprs) is the substantive system that will address the monitoring and oversight of public procurement in Nigeria, designed specifically to automate the complex mandate of the Nigerian Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), as proposed by UNODC through its Information and Technology Service (ITS) to meet the current and foreseen future needs of BPP. The main features of the goprs are: A dynamic web portal; An electronic case file system; A document management system; A workflow engine; CALENDARING A commodity pricing register for creation of a nationwide commodity catalogue with standard pricing; Services register for the registration of service providers and standard prices for services; An analytical module for AUDIT comparison of submitted TRACKING & documents for a procurement SECURITY process against established standard operating procedures; A report writer for the creation of user-defined reports; An audit tracking module for logging actions by each user; A data acquisition module that REPORT allows for importing Excel sheets, WRITER Power Point presentations, PDF files and Word documents and storing them in the system, with full-text search features; A calendaring feature for supervisors to assign ad-hoc tasks to their staff, as well as allowing a staff member to log reminders. MARKET INVESTIGATION - SUPPLIERS ANALYTICAL MODULE Electronic Case File ANTICIPATION OF NEEDs Market investigation - Users Development of tender documents Evaluation of tenders DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT PUBLIC PROCUREMENT PROCESS Decision Making and contract signing Administration of contracts DATA IMPORT DYNAMIC WEB PORTAL Collection and Analyis of Needs COMMODITY & SERVICES CATALOGUE STANDARD FEATURES WORKFLOW ENGINE

5 goidm is a practical model that helps government agencies make their electronic data management more efficient and decentralized by managing all types of information ranging from basic human resources management to highly confidential information within a secure ICT environment. The main features of the goidm are: 7 x 24 x 365 availability Secure Internet access and high-performance communications infrastructure Application hosting Content distribution File storage and backup Databases and applications management e.g. goprs (Procurement Review Software) Fail-safe reliability and continuous monitoring Redundancy and path diversity for power, cabling, Internet access, etc. Racks, cabinets and support infrastructure Adequate cooling of electronic devices via access flooring, specialized racks and other ducting methods Physical and network-access security and surveillance Zoned environmental control (temperature, humidity, etc.) Fire suppression and early warning smoke detection systems I wish to commend you and your Abuja team for a job well done in terms of the deployment of infrastructure and the new Data Centre at our premises. The good communication impact we are experiencing already both internally and externally on our business and mandate delivery feels wonderful. Engr. Emeka M. Ezeh, FNSE, Director-General, BPP

6 CONTACT DETAILS For more information about goprs and goidm, please contact: Adebowale Adedokun, SA to the DG Bureau of Public Procurement 11, Suleiman Barau Crescent Off Ibrahim Taiwo Street Aso Villa, Abuja Office phone: (+234-9) Mobile phone: ( ) Website: Mariam Sissoko, Representative Country Office in Nigeria United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Mobile phone: ( ) Website: Alain Nkoyock, Chief, Corporate Networks Unit Information Technology Service Division for Management United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Vienna International Centre, Austria Office phone: (+43-1) Mobile phone: ( ) Websites: unov.org, unodc.org, goidm.unodc.org, goprs.unodc.org Version 1.0, January 2012 Version 1, December 2011