Public Procurement Service Revises Excellent Procurement Products Designation System... Enhancing Information Disclosure and Lowering Entry Barriers

[Asia Economy (Daejeon) Reporter Jeong Il-woong] The Public Procurement Service (PPS) is revising the Excellent Procurement Products designation system to enhance the transparency of the product designation review and procurement administration.

According to the PPS on the 5th, the system improvements focus on ▲non-face-to-face operation ▲information disclosure ▲lowering entry barriers ▲strengthening unfair practice management and penalties during the Excellent Procurement Products designation process.

First, the PPS is establishing an operational system within the PPS online technical evaluation system, the ‘eBalju System,’ to enable the technical review of excellent products, which was previously conducted face-to-face, to be conducted non-face-to-face.

The operational system is scheduled to be completed by March and will be fully introduced into the excellent product designation review after a pilot operation. After implementation, it is expected to prevent unnecessary contact between reviewers and companies during the technical review process.

Starting this month, information disclosure will also be implemented, such as announcing the standard administrative processing days for excellent product unit price contracts and sending text messages to notify the progress of contract procedures.

Additionally, to assist companies facing difficulties entering the excellent product market due to unfamiliar system usage, the PPS explained that it will produce work manuals, related booklets, and videos to improve user understanding.

Conversely, management and penalties for unfair practices will be strengthened. From this month, an integrity ombudsman will observe the excellent product technical review, and a multi-faceted evaluation system for reviewers will be introduced in the first half of the year to strengthen investigations related to fairness in the review process. Furthermore, the regulations will explicitly state (in March) that if unfair acts such as prior contact with reviewers are detected, designation will be suspended or excluded.

Kim Jeong-woo, Administrator of the PPS, said, “We will significantly improve related systems to enhance the fairness of the excellent product system and dispel external concerns. Through this, we will ensure that anyone can recognize the excellence and transparency of excellent products.”

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