The scattered information of supplier's background makes it difficult to identify suitable suppliers for public procurement and affects goods, services and works delivery. The "Single Supplier Search" through single supplier sheet integrates and validates, through Big Data, providers' qualifiable aspects to be a supplier. It promotes transparency, citizen oversight and provides reliable and timely information to buyers, suppliers and citizens.
Innovation Summary
Innovation Overview
For a long time, Peruvian public procurement has faced significant risks in supplying process of goods, services and works. Cross-cutting risks such as the lack of consolidated information of supplier’s background and history has prevailed over the need to make more efficient decision making to minimize risks that affect the supply chain. In addition, public entities had a complicated labour to search information in different sources to find providers with impediments, which generated a reactive response when infraction regulations were detected. In many times, these public procurement processes were canceled or nulled, which brought as a consequence the lack of attention the population needs in terms of quality and opportunity.
Likewise, the huge power of more than 70,000 million soles of public budget which is spent each year on public procurement process in Peru must be supported by transparency as a fundamental principle of public procurement to guarantee adequate control of contract awards and minimize corruption risks. That's why "Single Supplier Search" tool came about. It incorporates and enables interested parties to make decisions with information from more than 2 million state suppliers and historical information on their contracts, company composition, partners, shareholders, legal representatives and administrative bodies, contracting capacity in the case of executors of works, disqualifications established by court order and administrative disqualifications arranged by bodies authorized by law and qualifying aspects of suppliers as impediments and sanctions before they are contracted.
Consequently, "Single Supplier Sheet" is a big opportunity to modify buyer’s behavior considering due diligence and improving decision-making of supplier’s selection. For suppliers, it is a space in which to present their record and experience information on public contracting in a transparent way. For citizens it represents contracting supervision empowerment with quality, reliable and timely information. Also, this tool promotes competitiveness, efficiency and integrity of public procurement.
The "Single Supplier Sheet" seeks to be a reference tool for digital products with a wide scope aligned to the National Policy for Integrity and the Fight Against Corruption and Public Sector Due Diligence.
The tool's main goal is to become an instrument that facilitates and makes transparent the access to suppliers’ information of goods, services, consultancies and works execution; consolidating information from the Supervisory Body for State Contracting, Organismo Supervisor de las Contrataciones del Estado (OSCE), and various public entities to give users a good experience with a friendly and easy to understood tool. The tool therefore contributes to avoid conflict of interest configuration in state contracting, with respect to those suppliers that could be included in some of the impediments of article 11 of Law Nº 30225 of State Contracts (Ley Nº 30225, Ley de Contrataciones del Estado).
There is a proposal to incorporate more information sources to enrich the searching and information transparency with databases of public sector personnel, financial system, regulatory and compliance, among others. Later and gradually, there will be a design of State suppliers performance measurement model with a clear objectivity and wide-ranging scope.
Innovation Description
What Makes Your Project Innovative?
The "Single Supplier Search" implemented in 2020, integrates information sources from various sectors and, using big data for data analytics, compares information from sworn declarations of interests of public servants and authorities at national level, contracts, supplier’s impediments and qualifying aspects to contract with the state, generating automatic alerts for public entities and restricting absolute impediments. The digital tool's development used an innovation framework, agile methodologies and a user experience (UX) approach, it incorporated public procurement actors in the co-creation and experimentation process. The most relevant impact has been the time saved (from 42 to 3 minutes) on searching suppliers' impediments before state contract awards. It represents an investment savings up to 6 million soles in terms of human labour hours; and also, this tool has been accepted by more than 84% of logistics operators as helpful and a tool for fighting against corruption in public procurement.
What is the current status of your innovation?
To date, "Single Supplier Search" is available for use and it has served as an information source for media reporting's labor in order to report cases of public procurement through the lens of integrity and transparency. On the other hand, OSCE is working on a results and impact assessment through a qualitative measurement of the digital tool's influence on the evaluation of suppliers interested in selection procedures. This involves collecting data through interviews and a detailed review of digital tool indicators.
Innovation Development
Collaborations & Partnerships
The OSCE made available suppliers' contractual experience and condition information, the National Superintendence of Customs and Tax Administration provided tax information, the Republic General Comptroller shared impediments of family member information, the National Elections Jury shared information regarding elected authorities and the Judiciary on convictions for corruption, among others. In addition, buyers and suppliers participated in understanding the problem, the tool design and development phases.
Users, Stakeholders & Beneficiaries
The "Single Supplier Search" helps buyers with information to improve supplier selection, which reduces costs and frictions for selection procedure decision making. Suppliers are benefitted with more contracting opportunities thanks to an exposure window that displays their contracting historical. Citizens receive the benefits of counting with reliable and timely information available continuously, 365 days per year.
Innovation Reflections
Results, Outcomes & Impacts
The "Single Supplier Search" with the Single Supplier Sheet has became a beneficial resource for public entities at the national level, since it presents integrated and updated information of more than 2 million national and foreign suppliers, and also has allowed for the validation of 324,290 offers of public contracting. Its adoption by public entities and citizens is reflected on more than 2.5 million visits made to the website since its launch in 2020. It's main results are:
- Available information sheets from more than 2 million 500 thousand suppliers.
- A total of 324,290 electronic offers have been validated since its launch.
- 20,588 impediments to get contracts were detected when sending electronic offers.
- An investment saving of more than 6 million soles due to the time reduction public entities spent on reviewing supplier information.
Challenges and Failures
One of the greatest challenges in the team has been to establish an active and continuous coordination mechanism with allied public entities, due to the need to include external sources and their rigor to keeping updated information on the "Single Supplier Search" tool. Likewise, the need to keep standardized information sources and integration technology were problems that the initiative has dealt with and will continue to deal with in order to enrich the tool with more information.
Conditions for Success
OSCE is a public procurement agency that since the last 3 years has been promoting an innovative culture. In that way, we believe that a crucial condition for the project's success has been institutional capacity to transform traditional processes to solutions in the digital era, while facing political changes and limited resources. It is important to develop digital products according to the digital transformation policy guidelines where the citizen is placed at the center of all efforts and initiatives. Since the project, due to its integrating nature, requires information from various public entities, it's really essential to guarantee effective and sustainable communication with all the interested parties to ensure the information's quality.
Replication
The "Single Supplier Search" tool has used emerging technologies and guidelines from Digital Transformation and Government Secretariat of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, thus it can be replicated and serve different purposes. Its responsive web version allows for information to be consulted from any PC, laptop, tablet or cell phone device. The use of innovation and agile frameworks during the development and maintenance phase of the product allows effective management and assures that any change can be oriented towards a public value proposition. Replication is encouraged as the initiative has been considered as a model tool for information transparency and due diligence by the National Policy on Integrity and the Fight against Corruption.
Lessons Learned
- A key aspect for innovation projects at the public sector is to put the citizen at the center of all efforts, through experimentation, co-creation and feedback on the solutions designed.
- Need to create an internal structure for an efficient team that allows for an agile response to changes and updates of the digital tool.
- Applying an innovation framework and a user experience design approach allows for building digital solutions that can solve public problems.
Project Pitch
Supporting Videos
Status:
- Evaluation - understanding whether the innovative initiative has delivered what was needed
- Diffusing Lessons - using what was learnt to inform other projects and understanding how the innovation can be applied in other ways
Innovation provided by:
Files:
Date Published:
19 July 2023