First Cut

Karnataka's e-Procurement Plans



The government of Karnataka has chalked out plans to move all contracts and
procurement across its departments on e-procurement platform in next two years.

The state government has chosen HP to provide a unified online e-procurement

platform. The implementation to be done by HP India will cover contract

management, track the progress of projects and would run on a public private

partnership model.

The platform would facilitate government procurement activities

like publishing of tenders/RFP, bidding online, empanelment of suppliers and

contractors, contract management and demand aggregation. The project also

involves training for not just the government staff but also contractors and

suppliers in rural and urban areas. To facilitate access to the system, the

government plans to set up cyber cafes at the taluk and sub-taluk levels in a

public-private partnership model.

DQ Views: With the whole

country talking e-Procurement, it's surprising that Karnataka took so much

time to jump into the bandwagon. A quick look into the scope of work in the

tender document and one realizes that lot of hard work has been put in by the

state's e-Gov department and NISG in preparing the blue print for the project.

However, what needs to be seen is how this ambitious project shapes up because

HP India, the L1 vendor to bag the implementation deal, has no previous history

of implementing e-procurement projects unlike the other three prime bidders-Wipro,

C1India and the consortium of TCS-SAP. The only deployment that HP has on

showcase is the one deployed in Japan, where HP India had no role to play at

all. Hope the Karnataka government and its PPP partner are able to prove the

detractors wrong.

KMC Adopts e-Governance



Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has decided to move on to the e-Governance
platform in 16 months time. According to reports, the entire e-Governance

platform would be implemented in a phased manner, with the online information

system up and running in a year's time. The e-payment gateway for KMC would,

however, need 16 months to roll out.



KMC has already short-listed BSNL as the network service provider for the
project that would be implemented through a grant-in fund of Rs 200 crore from

the UK government's Department for International Development (DFID). The

entire gamut of civic processes will be available online and though dedicated

kiosks set up for this purpose.

DQ Views: e-Governance

at municipal level would certainly make a difference and KMC must be

congratulated for taking the first step forward. However, there is a lesson to

be learnt from the various other municipal-level e-Gov projects. KMC should not

address the issue from a service delivery point of view, which is like putting

the horse before the cart. As in any 'good governance' initiative, the KMC

project should attempt to improve the internal processes and automating the

back-end process environment rather than creating kiosks for the purpose. With

the number of Internet subscribers and cyber cafes fast moving north, KMC can

focus more on GPR and leave the kiosks for the second phase. A good idea would

be to rope in cyber cafes, post offices and banks as the service delivery

centers.

Shubhendu Parth



shubhendup@cybermedia.co.in