Lack of transparency in government procurement has been a systemic problem in Nepal. In addition, inefficiency due to manual and paper-driven procurement processes has resulted in poor service and limited participation of bidders. The 2003 study under Electronic Government in Nepal found that establishing an e-GP System could help improve transparency, efficiency, and value for money in government procurement. Stakeholders (government agencies and suppliers) also showed their support to the e-GP concept.

A strong commitment at the highest political level, reflected through an amendment to Procurement reforms and a demand-driven process, with extensive consultations involving all stakeholders at the time of developing the e-Procurement solution, make e-GP innovative in Nepal’s economic and political context. In 2011, through the third amendment to the PPR (Public Procurement Reform), PPMO was mandated to operate a single national e-GP portal. The amendment also clearly stated that public entities should carry out their procurement transactions through the single e-GP Portal established by PPMO. Thus, developing and implementing the e-GP system became national agenda.
PPMO conducted a study to envisage the functionality of national e-GP system and make it compatible with international e-GP best practices. As per the study’s recommendation, a national e-GP system was developed in two phases – Phase I and Phase II. e-GP Phase II is the upgraded version of e-GP Phase I. e-GP Phase I covers up to only bid opening and e-GP Phase II covers all the functions after bid opening i.e. bid evaluation, contract awarding, contract management, dispute management, and payment. At the moment, Government of Nepal and its various entities are using Phase I and Phase II parallelly.

Impact Generated

Since the market demand of e-GP was already high, and national-level effort on e-GP implementation was much delayed, different government organizations had started developing and implementing some form of their own e-GP functionalities. At that time, Nepal did not also have any e-GP Policy in place for implementation of a unitary e-GP system for the Government.
Now, PPMO is ready with the latest system from January 2017 for all public entities across the country, including all local-level agencies. This system is the full-fledged e-GP system covering all aspects of procurement, from planning to contract management, including the Public Procurement Management Information System (PPMIS). All Standard Bidding Documents (SBDs) of procurement of works, goods, and consulting services issued by PPMO and Single Stage Two Envelope system are integrated in the application. Public entities have already started phasing out their own individual e-submission systems and are coming into national e-GP System.

Scalability and Sustainability

e-GP Phase II caters to all the functionalities of public procurement. The system is developed based on scalable architecture and international best practices, so that it can be integrated with other ICT systems. There is no need to install, manage, and operate the system in each public entity; they just have to register into the system and use it as per their need.

The separate development of e-Submission System within individual departments / public entities has the following shortcomings:

1. The separate development of e-Submission System within individual departments / public entities has the following shortcomings:
2. Difficult to control and check the compliance with legal framework.
3. Fragments the opportunities to bidders.
4. Government’s public procurement information is scattered.

These shortcomings, in turn, impact the development of an efficient and effective high quality management framework for public sector procurement