Brief

Government of Karnataka e-Procurement Platform enabled by HP

The technology partnership between The Government of Karnataka (GOK) and Hewlett-Packard (HP) to power a key e-Procurement initiative has met with increased adoption among the contractor community.

The following departments of the GOK have adopted the HP-enabled e-Procurement platform successfully:

• Public Works, Ports and IWT Dept (PWD)
• Sarvasiksha Abhigyan (SSA)
• Karnataka Drug Logistics Warehousing Society (KDLWS)
• Krishna Bhagya Jala Nigama Limited (KBJNL)
• Center for e-Governance (CEG)

The solution running on HP infrastructure, including industry standard Blade servers, SAN Storage and Enterprise Class Applications based on Open Source technology has already resulted in tangible benefits to the departments. Proof Points from the point of view of benefit to the GOK, include a reduction of the tender processing time from estimate preparation to tendering, in the case of PWD there has been a reduction of up to 40% in transaction time.

For the contractor community, specific benefits include the reconciliation of Earnest Money Deposit (EMD) and other payment related parameters by 50-60% as all payment transactions are now enabled online and the return of EMD to contractors is now quicker and simpler.

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% over a period of three years.

As part of the partnership, extensive training has been conducted by HP for both, the contractor community (Works & Goods) and Government Users and individual department employees. The training spans both the operational use of the portal as well as management of change to address the behavioral aspects of the shift to an e-Procurement platform. This training would continue till such time as all the departments are on board and will be supplemented by on-call support as and when required.

Best practices followed worldwide by HP in implementing such projects have been adopted and tailored to customize the implementation for the GOK. This ensures the project’s continued success and leverage of technology for effective e-Governance.