"Complete Overhaul of Procurement Evaluation Committee Management with Pre-Inspection of Post-Management Reports"

The Public Procurement Service (PPS) is completely overhauling the management method for procurement evaluation committee members. The core of this change is to strengthen the management of evaluation committee members by shifting from the existing post-management method (taking action after notifying investigative agencies) to a pre-inspection method to prevent collusion between committee members and companies.

On the 20th, PPS announced that it will newly introduce and operate a ‘Triple Management System for Evaluation Committee Members’ to strengthen pre-management of committee members.

Amendments to the Integrated Management Regulations for Procurement Service Evaluation Committee Members. Provided by the Public Procurement Service.

The triple management system will operate by cross-monitoring suspicious signs of collusion between evaluation committee members and companies, as well as the fairness, sincerity, and expertise of individual committee members. It will also establish a system where pre-contact between committee members and companies or bribery and offering can be reported.

First, PPS plans to take preemptive measures to exclude committee members from negotiations if suspicious cases (collusion) such as giving excessively high or low scores to specific companies are confirmed through the ‘Evaluation History Management System’ in consultation with the responsible department. The Evaluation History Management System is currently in pilot operation and is expected to be fully utilized from the second half of this year.

Management of evaluation committee members will also be conducted through the ‘Evaluation Committee Monitoring Group.’ In the field, there have been cases where companies subject to evaluation have filed complaints about unfair evaluations, insincere attitudes, or unprofessional remarks by committee members.

In this regard, PPS will form an Evaluation Committee Monitoring Group to supervise committee members on-site, enabling monitoring and checks to ensure that companies receive reasonable evaluations they can accept.

Specifically, committee members who receive poor scores from the monitoring results will face disadvantages such as negotiation restrictions and dismissal, while those who receive excellent scores will be given incentives such as recognition from the PPS Administrator and expanded participation in evaluations, according to PPS.

A new ‘Evaluation Committee Reporting Center’ will also be established where pre-contact between committee members and companies, bribery, and offering can be reported. Considering recent prosecutorial investigations that revealed solicitation and bribery between committee members and companies, which damaged the credibility of the procurement evaluation process, this aims to activate a reporting culture to prevent such cases from recurring in the field.

Suspicious cases received through reports will be reviewed by the evaluation department, and if concrete evidence and circumstances are found, follow-up actions such as dismissal of committee members, deduction of evaluation scores, and referral to police investigations will be taken.

Additionally, PPS plans to increase the pool of evaluation committee members from the current approximately 7,000 to 10,000 within the year to secure a large number of expert committee members. To ensure they approach evaluations with responsibility, PPS will significantly revise the ‘PPS Evaluation Committee Integrated Management Regulations’ within this month.

Im Gi-geun, Administrator of PPS, said, “Selecting the optimal business operator through objective and fair evaluation is the most important mission in public procurement. To uphold this, PPS will swiftly establish a triple management system for evaluation committee members to thoroughly pre-manage them, and ultimately strive to enable the public and procurement companies to feel the changes on the ground.”

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