It has been about two years since the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, 2015 was of­fi­cial­ly gazetted.

How­ev­er, since the amend­ed Act came in­to ef­fect in April 2023, the tran­si­tion has not been smooth with some pub­lic of­fices find­ing var­i­ous pro­cure­ment dif­fi­cul­ties.

Dr Mar­garet Rose, the founder of the Pro­cure­ment Com­pli­ance Plus Ini­tia­tive (PC+) is hop­ing that its Learn­ing Lab Se­ries, set to be held on May 2, will help ad­dress some of these teething prob­lems faced in the pub­lic ser­vice.

She said, “At PC+, we be­lieve that strong in­sti­tu­tions are the bedrock of a re­silient democ­ra­cy and a func­tion­al state. Our Learn­ing Lab Se­ries is a time­ly in­ter­ven­tion fo­cused on build­ing the in­sti­tu­tion­al and pro­fes­sion­al ca­pac­i­ty re­quired to op­er­a­tionalise one of the most sig­nif­i­cant gov­er­nance re­forms in T&T’s post-In­de­pen­dence his­to­ry – the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, 2015, which came in­to force on April 26, 2023. As we ap­proach the two-year an­niver­sary of this trans­for­ma­tive leg­is­la­tion, it is crit­i­cal to shift the na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion from pol­i­tics to pub­lic sec­tor per­for­mance and ac­count­abil­i­ty.”

She ex­plained that since the procla­ma­tion of Act led to the es­tab­lish­ment of the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor (OPR), that of­fice has done a lot of sen­si­ti­sa­tion ses­sions with var­i­ous arms of the pub­lic.

PC+’s Learn­ing Lab Se­ries, which will be held in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Lex Caribbean, the Law As­so­ci­a­tion and the Con­trac­tors As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go, aims to ad­dress pain points in pub­lic sec­tor pro­cure­ment based on the ob­ser­va­tions the team has seen first-hand, said Rose, who is an at­tor­ney-at-law.

“We have now so many new rights that sup­pli­ers now hold in re­spect of their par­tic­i­pa­tion in pub­lic sec­tor bid­ding ex­er­cis­es. That means pub­lic sec­tor bod­ies are un­der many more re­port­ing oblig­a­tions, sub­ject to in­ves­ti­ga­tion with­out even com­plaint by the OPR, sub­ject to chal­lenges that can stop their pro­cure­ment process­es, that can stop projects, that can quash con­tract awards and all of that by the OPR, and al­so new crim­i­nal of­fens­es and li­a­bil­i­ties. So it re­al­ly is about, how do we build a pub­lic sec­tor ca­pac­i­ty to do this bet­ter in com­pli­ance with the law. “

The Ini­tia­tive’s co-founder, Vaughn Ron­don, has had his own ex­pe­ri­enced fac­ing chal­lenges un­der the new law. He said it was im­por­tant that the train­ing se­ries fill in the gaps in change man­age­ment and pro­vide guid­ance to pub­lic bod­ies, con­trac­tors, and sup­pli­ers. He stressed for the pro­cure­ment process to be suc­cess­ful and ef­fi­cient, it is im­por­tant to in­flu­ence or­gan­i­sa­tion­al cul­ture and have more of­fi­cials un­der­stand the “why” be­hind the rules.

“Our chal­lenge re­al­ly is the new reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work and from a pro­cure­ment stand­point, it’s some­thing dif­fer­ent to what we ac­cus­tomed do­ing. So now, in this le­gal re­quire­ment le­gal frame­work, we’re try­ing to cre­ate that hy­brid where we have the sup­port and the in­ter­pre­ta­tion from the le­gal as­pect, and then we al­so bring the pro­cure­ment best prac­tice and knowl­edge, and then al­so the lo­cal flavour. What are the re­al­i­ties on the ground with re­gards to nav­i­gat­ing this new regime? “ Ron­don asked rhetor­i­cal­ly.

“We’re do­ing some­thing new, and it is ab­sent from a reg­u­la­to­ry stand­point. So we are try­ing to fill that gap. We’re not in­ter­est­ed in peo­ple get­ting ar­rest­ed. We are in­ter­est­ed in the ef­fi­cien­cy and the val­ue that is to be added from the ground up. So we def­i­nite­ly looked at the train­ing se­ries and the labs to pro­vide that lev­el of guid­ance to not on­ly pub­lic bod­ies, but al­so con­trac­tors and sup­pli­ers.”

Ron­don ex­plained that cur­rent­ly, many of­fi­cials were reach­ing out in­for­mal­ly to try to un­der­stand what need­ed to be done to en­sure that the law is be­ing fol­lowed. How­ev­er, that has come with its prob­lems.

“What we have go­ing right now, we have a num­ber of What­sApp groups that have been cre­at­ed through­out the land­scape of in­di­vid­u­als and re­al­ly and tru­ly peo­ple giv­ing ad­vice on your What­sApp. You can’t take that to your board of di­rec­tors. But come in­to our en­ti­ty, we’re able to give you an opin­ion, which in the le­gal frame­work, could be akin to a le­gal opin­ion where we give you the whys be­hind it,” said Ron­don.

Apart from the in-per­son ses­sions, the PC+ team al­so has an on­line com­mu­ni­ty plat­form, pro­cure­ment­com­pli­ance.com which will of­fer on­go­ing sup­port and vir­tu­al of­fice hours.

Ron­don said, “There are so many ques­tions be­cause this is new. There are so many ques­tions com­ing for­ward on a dai­ly ba­sis. We have ques­tions that we are an­swer­ing too from a reg­u­la­to­ry stand­point. It is a lit­tle tick­lish area be­tween what the reg­u­la­tor can re­spond to and what do they have to reg­u­late? So that is a chal­lenge in it­self. When I ask a ques­tion, the OPR might say, well, I can’t re­al­ly re­spond to that, be­cause if it has to come be­fore me, it’s a dif­fer­ent set­ting. So there is a gap that can be filled with re­gards to as­sis­tance. So it’s tak­ing what is be­ing done in a sce­nario ses­sion and just tak­ing a lev­el up with some lev­el of re­spond­ing and in­tu­ition of the law.”

The first lab in the se­ries, “Chal­lenge Pro­ceed­ings Lab,” will analyse OPR de­ci­sions and pro­vide in­ter­ac­tive learn­ing.

“What we are look­ing at there, the chal­lenge pro­ceed­ings are ac­tu­al­ly one of the most thorny ar­eas that have been in­tro­duced by the new leg­is­la­tion. It’s some­thing for which we have no his­to­ry, prece­dent or back­ground in the re­gion, much less, in Trinidad and To­ba­go. And so what it does right now, there’s a 21-day process that in which a sup­pli­er or con­trac­tor can ini­ti­ate with the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tor, and that’s putting a lot of pres­sure on pub­lic sec­tor bod­ies,” Rose said.

“We have two years of de­ci­sions that the OPR has been mak­ing in these chal­lenge pro­ceed­ings. So, at the event, we are go­ing to be go­ing through, analysing those de­ci­sions, pulling out pat­terns and trends, how is the OPR in­ter­pret­ing these pro­vi­sions,” she added.

Rose said while most may look to the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tions, sched­uled for April 28, as the av­enue of good gov­er­nance, she stressed it was im­por­tant for pub­lic of­fi­cers to al­so un­der­stand how they con­tribute to the coun­try se­cur­ing the best val­ue.

“Nine-nine per cent of the peo­ple in the pub­lic sec­tor who are in­volved in pub­lic pro­cure­ment every day will not be chang­ing come April 28. And so it’s about how do we cre­ate long-term, sus­tain­able re­form. We’re liv­ing in a time when we are see­ing in oth­er coun­tries when you elect cer­tain peo­ple, that’s cer­tain­ly not the an­swer.

“So I think the an­swer lies in one of the things that in­spires me, ANR Robin­son said many, many years ago. He said the fail­ure in Trinidad and To­ba­go is the fail­ure of the pro­fes­sion­al class to stand up, to be crit­i­cal, to bring their skills to bear in de­ci­sion mak­ing, in terms of gov­er­nance. We want to try not to feel like pro­fes­sion­als ad­vis­ing pub­lic sec­tor bod­ies, as pro­fes­sion­als work­ing in pub­lic sec­tor bod­ies, or pro­fes­sion­als ad­vis­ing sup­pli­ers. And we want to help to build the ca­pac­i­ty of all of us to be the so­lu­tion, as op­posed to look­ing at elect­ed of­fi­cials as the so­lu­tion to good gov­er­nance,” she said.