Part 2 of this se­ries on the Pro­cure­ment Act eval­u­at­ed the readi­ness of pub­lic bod­ies (min­istries state en­ter­pris­es, statu­to­ry cor­po­ra­tions and oth­er de­part­ments) for the changes con­tem­plat­ed by the act. The OPR readi­ness sur­veys sug­gest a low lev­el of readi­ness for the changes re­quired by the act. 

All or­gan­i­sa­tions ex­ist for a pur­pose. Pub­lic bod­ies are no dif­fer­ent. To achieve its ob­jec­tives, an or­gan­i­sa­tion de­pends on a range of sup­port­ing sys­tems and process­es that must be aligned. These in­clude sys­tems and pro­ce­dures for man­ag­ing cash, in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy, mar­ket­ing, hu­man re­sources, and pro­cure­ment. These are in­te­grat­ed, not stand­alone process­es. Or­gan­i­sa­tions are not built to pro­cure goods or ser­vices alone. The pro­cure­ment process is one of many process­es that en­able any or­gan­i­sa­tion to achieve its ob­jec­tives and must seam­less­ly in­te­grate. OPR guide­lines recog­nise this as does the act. Fix­ing one process alone is in­ad­e­quate.

There­fore, any im­prove­ment in the pro­cure­ment mech­a­nisms in pub­lic bod­ies im­plies corol­lary and com­pen­sat­ing ad­just­ments to the oth­er sys­tems with­in each or­gan­i­sa­tion. Fix­ing the pro­cure­ment process alone while ex­clud­ing sup­port­ing amend­ments in oth­er ar­eas would un­der­mine any im­prove­ments to the pro­cure­ment process. There­fore, the Pro­cure­ment Act should be seen as a cat­a­lyst for im­prov­ing all sys­tems and process­es with­in all pub­lic bod­ies, a metaphor for pub­lic ser­vice mod­erni­sa­tion and dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion in ef­fect. This re­quires a more co­or­di­nat­ed ap­proach.

The ad­van­tage of this ap­proach is that it would im­prove the op­er­at­ing ef­fi­cien­cy of each en­ti­ty. Any ef­fi­cien­cy im­prove­ment in how these bod­ies func­tion should re­duce their ex­pen­di­ture. This is high­ly de­sir­able giv­en the lim­i­ta­tions of pub­lic fi­nances. In any event, ef­fi­cien­cy is re­quired for its own sake. 

Im­ple­ment­ing the changes re­quired by the act in pub­lic bod­ies re­quires re­align­ment and busi­ness process reengi­neer­ing in each en­ti­ty. These process changes are deep and will vary be­tween in­sti­tu­tions, as some may be bet­ter pre­pared for the changes. For-prof­it state en­ter­pris­es op­er­at­ing in the pri­vate sec­tor should be able to un­der­take the nec­es­sary im­prove­ments on their own al­beit on a phased ba­sis. Up­dat­ing all pub­lic bod­ies si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly is not a fea­si­ble op­tion. Im­ple­ment­ing com­put­er sys­tems across mul­ti­ple or­gan­i­sa­tions is fraught with dif­fi­cul­ty. Even in the best of or­gan­i­sa­tions, in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy ob­jec­tives are of­ten un­re­alised be­cause they are too wide-rang­ing or too many. 

For ex­am­ple, the act re­quires pro­cure­ment process­es to align with the an­nu­al bud­get process. Items to be pro­cured should be pub­lished quar­ter­ly in ad­vance for the in­for­ma­tion of prospec­tive sup­pli­ers. This means that pro­cure­ment records must be main­tained in a for­mat that fa­cil­i­tates quar­ter­ly and an­nu­al re­views. Com­pil­ing these records is not sim­ple, and it is un­like­ly that these records can be done man­u­al­ly for an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od. In this con­text, elec­tron­ic spread­sheets will count as man­u­al. 

The re­port­ing re­quire­ments alone are a com­pelling rea­son for the com­put­er­i­sa­tion of the process­es in­volved. This ex­plains why the OPR is re­spon­si­ble “to de­ter­mine, de­vel­op, in­tro­duce, main­tain, and up­date re­lat­ed sys­tem-wide data­bas­es and tech­nol­o­gy.” How­ev­er, the OPR is on­ly re­spon­si­ble for the pro­cure­ment process and over­see­ing the im­prove­ment of such process­es. A key ques­tion is whether the OPR has the nec­es­sary bud­get to ef­fect this re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. Even if it re­ceives the nec­es­sary fund­ing, that does not en­sure that oth­er pub­lic bod­ies will have the fund­ing to im­ple­ment these sys­tem changes.  

Im­ple­ment­ing com­mon sys­tems across many or­gan­i­sa­tions is both time-con­sum­ing and com­pli­cat­ed. Poor­ly im­ple­ment­ed sys­tems are cost­ly be­cause they ab­sorb re­sources that should be de­ployed else­where, lead­ing to in­er­tia in cor­rect­ing the poor­ly im­ple­ment­ed sys­tem. This in­sti­tu­tion­alis­es in­ef­fi­cien­cy. The IRIS sys­tem im­ple­men­ta­tion in all min­istries is a good ex­am­ple of the com­pli­ca­tions that could arise. The fail­ure to achieve mul­ti­ple ob­jec­tives can be very cost­ly. This is one rea­son why the time­ly pay­ment of gov­ern­ment pen­sions for re­tired pub­lic ser­vants is prob­lem­at­ic notwith­stand­ing the im­ple­men­ta­tion of IRIS (In­te­grat­ed Hu­man Re­source In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem). 

Im­ple­ment­ing CROS (Com­pa­nies On­line Reg­istry Sys­tem) at the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs or the com­pli­cat­ed and in­com­plete process­es to fa­cil­i­tate tax pay­ments on­line all lead to low pub­lic con­fi­dence. The CROS sys­tem re­quires all com­pa­ny di­rec­tors to give per­son­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion da­ta and con­tact de­tails and is pub­licly avail­able to any­one. Yet banks still re­quire com­pa­ny di­rec­tors to pro­vide per­son­al de­tails and util­i­ty bills in keep­ing with know-your-cus­tomer rules as ad­vised by the Cen­tral Bank and the FIU (Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit). What is the pur­pose of the CROS if the same da­ta is pub­licly avail­able to all and is un­used? Has any­one been suc­cess­ful­ly pros­e­cut­ed for mon­ey laun­der­ing?

The cur­rent im­passe be­tween the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, and the Fi­nance Min­is­ter has, at its core, poor­ly im­ple­ment­ed soft­ware at the Cen­tral Bank, where the op­er­at­ing con­trols to en­sure ac­cu­ra­cy were ei­ther in­ad­e­quate or failed. It is im­por­tant to note that the soft­ware tools at the heart of this “er­ror” have been in use by banks world­wide for the last 20 years with­out this con­fu­sion. In­deed, if in­ter­bank set­tle­ment sys­tems man­age tril­lions of USD every day, the in­ter­na­tion­al pay­ment sys­tem would be a dis­as­ter.  

In sum­ma­ry, the em­pha­sis should be on pub­lic sec­tor mod­erni­sa­tion and trans­for­ma­tion as ends in them­selves, not as a pos­i­tive byprod­uct of im­ple­ment­ing the Pro­cure­ment Act.  

Mar­i­ano Browne is the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness