Public Procurement Service's 'Post-Corona Response,' Activation of e-Ordering System

‘Non-face-to-face’ Transition and Activation of Public Procurement Market Bidding Methods... Maximizing Effects such as Infectious Disease Prevention, Cost Reduction, and Timely Implementation of Government Projects

A flowchart of the public procurement contract bidding process (focused on proposal submission and technical evaluation). Provided by the Public Procurement Service.

[Asia Economy (Daejeon) Reporter Jeong Il-woong] The Public Procurement Service (PPS) is preparing and promoting measures to revitalize the e-Procurement System. The aim is to support more effective responses to the post-COVID-19 era by handling the entire negotiation contract process ordered by public institutions online.

According to the PPS on the 26th, the e-Procurement System was operated internally within the PPS only, but has been fully opened to all public institutions since October last year.

In particular, as the spread of the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19) highlighted the online evaluation (non-face-to-face) method, the utilization of the e-Procurement System is expected to increase significantly.

First, the government urgently switched all evaluations, including negotiation contract evaluations, to ‘online evaluation’ last month. Additionally, the threshold for projects subject to online evaluation was raised from under 1 billion KRW to under 2 billion KRW, and for projects over 2 billion KRW, ‘online evaluation’ is possible if necessary for purposes such as infectious disease prevention, based on the revised detailed criteria for proposal evaluation in negotiation contracts by the PPS. This has further emphasized the utilization of the e-Procurement System.

Accordingly, the PPS plans to enhance the effectiveness of post-COVID-19 responses by providing customized evaluation support to self-ordering demand institutions and improving the performance of the e-Procurement System as part of revitalization measures.

Customized evaluation support will be promoted by providing ‘e-Procurement System Evaluation Procedure Guides’ to institutions conducting self-evaluations and establishing a ‘Video Evaluation Information Page’ on the Korea ON-line E-Procurement System (KONEPS). Additionally, online evaluation tasks such as mock evaluations and video presentations will be supported through surveys of demand institutions.

System performance improvements will be made by expanding a dedicated PDF viewer server so that evaluation committee members can compare proposals in real time and by further extending video software licenses to facilitate smooth evaluations.

The PPS expects that once the e-Procurement System is revitalized through these measures, it will help prevent the spread of infectious diseases during public procurement bidding processes, reduce bidding costs, and enable timely execution of government projects.

Lee Hyun-ho, Director of the New Technology Service Bureau at the PPS, explained, “The e-Procurement System was originally developed to facilitate proposal preparation and cost reduction for bidders, alleviate the shortage of evaluation venues, and overcome spatial and temporal constraints for evaluation committee members.”

He added, “The purpose of developing the e-Procurement System aligns with the importance of non-face-to-face (Untact) methods highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The PPS will expedite preparations to proactively respond to the post-COVID era by advancing the public procurement sector in the forthcoming digital economy age.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.