The State Public Works Department (PWD) will introduce e-tendering soon as part of an initiative to make the tendering system more efficient and transparent.
The Minister for PWD, Mr V. K. Ibrahim Kunju, said here that the new system would go live in Thiruvananthapuram district on Wednesday.
QUICK TIME
This would bring about a system where applicants would not get to know each other until the time of opening the tender.
Contracts would be able to go through the tender notification and related documents from and participate in the tender through the PWD web site itself obviating the need to be present themselves personally at the respective PWD offices.
E-tendering would also help go through with the tendering process in quick time, the Minister said. This apart, the tendering profile, procedures and other details would be made available at the web site to ensure transparency.
It was in year 2008 that the department web site and the web-based e-governance system (WINGS) were upgraded as part of the World Bank-aided Kerala State Transport Project (KSTP).
The IT wing of the Department had decided to ride on this facility and launch the drive to implement the e-tendering from 2010 itself.
As the first phase, the e-governance software was used to prepare and notify tender documents at the respective offices of the PWD and upload same on to the web site.
Interested parties could download the tender documents and submit their tender by rushing the same through Speed Post.
This system had allowed the contractors to take part in the tender without having the need to run up to the Department office.
But on April 26, 2010, the existing software was disqualified from facilitating two-way transactions since it did not measure up to a set of new specifications issued by the Central Vigilance Commission.
This meant that comprehensive on-line tendering in which contractors could submit the ender through the e-platform was not possible anymore with this software.
Subsequently, the Department decided to request for expertise from specific agencies which had successfully implemented online tendering in other States.
This elicited responses from n(Code) Solutions of Gujarat, the Karnataka State Electronics Development Corporation (Keonics) and the National Informatics Centre (NIC).
It was later decided that e-tendering be implemented as part of the National E-Governance Programme (NeGP) in not just the PWD but some other departments of the State Government by making use of the NIC software backed up by Central assistance, the Minister said.
A preliminary training session was conducted in June and July of this year to get the officials of the PWD familiarise themselves with the new software.
Deployment of the software through the PWD network is in an advanced stage.
The Minister also said more training sessions on the use of the NIC software would be conducted for the benefit of both officials as well as contractors.