BANGALORE, INDIA: Karnataka, which has identified itself among the best e-governed states in the country, is extending the benefits of e-governance to all the major government departments and agencies with new initiatives.

The Government of Karnataka (GOK) in association with Hewlett Packard (HP) is aggressively spearheading adoption of e-governance through the e-procurement process.

In a bid to ensure transparency in procurement, the State Government recently launched a unified end-to-end e-procurement platform for all government departments, aimed at reducing the cost of procurement, enhancing efficiency and promoting healthy competition.

The e-procurement process helps the government to handle online tenders and bidding in a systematic and transparent way. This has met with increased adoption among the contractor community, making this initiative one of the most successful Public Private Partnership (PPP) implementations in the country.

Departments like Public Works, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, Karnataka Drug Logistics Warehousing Society, Krishna Bhagya Jala Nigama Limited and Center for e-Governance (CEG) have adopted the HP-enabled e-procurement platform successfully.

The solution running on HP infrastructure, including industry standard HP Blade servers, HP SAN Storage and Enterprise Class Applications based on Open Source technology has already resulted in tangible benefits to the departments.

"The e-procurement initiative has benefited the state government in a big way by dramatic reduction in the tender processing time from estimate preparation to tendering. In the case of PWD, a reduction of up to 40 percent on transaction time has been achieved," said Sudhir Krishna, Principal Secretary (public works), GOK, at a discussion to share the key learnings and experiences of the e-governance initiative by Karnataka governemnt, organized by HP.

Presently, the online tendering process through e-procurement has been limited to projects worth Rs.. 50 lakh and above.

Addressing the media, he said, "e-procurement is very important for us, because we handle lot of projects. PWD alone spends at least Rs.. 2000 core a year. The manual tendering process was very tedious and there was no transparency. Participating in a tender online paves way for transparency as it does not disclose the identity of the bidder and boosts the confidence of the contractor fraternity."

Benefits of e-procurement

One of the leading benefits of the e-procurement initiative has been the standardization of public procurement practices across departments for works and goods procurement. The initiative has also led to greater transparency. It is anticipated that over time, there will be a significant increase in the number of bidders for a particular tender, hence increasing healthy competition and keeping the final price down. The expected price amortization is likely to touch 20-30 percent over a period of three years.

For the contractor community, specific benefits include the reconciliation of earnest money deposit (EMD) and other payment related parameters by a remarkable 50-60 percent as all payment transactions are now enabled online - i.e., the return of EMD to contractors is now much quicker and simpler.

"Transparency, efficiency and cost-effectiveness were the three major gains from the e-procurement initiative," said Ajay Seth, Secretary, e-governance. "The e-procurement process is a fully integrated system, where the entire lifecycle of the tendering process - from the start of the indent till the contract management - is done online, he said.

"With change management becoming critical, this initiative offers definite gains for us as well as the bidders," he said.

So far, the state government has floated 23 tenders for projects worth Rs.. 73 crores in various departments through e-procurement in the last two months. "We are planning to set up similar centers at the Gram Panchayat level to enable GtoC and BtoC services in the rural areas of the state," Seth added.

The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, with a primary objective of improving the quality of education in the state, was the first one to go with the e-procurement initiative in the state and has floated four tenders. Vandita Sharma, Project Director SSA, said, "We have implemented computerization in all government primary schools in the state. We have set up our own e-government training center to train the employees of education department." As we deal more with printers and computers, the e-procurement system has enabled a foolproof and transparent system, she added.

"These are continuing steps in improvement in e-governance, which is required in all departments. A step that builds public confidence on the department," she added.