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Case Study of the Management Information System used in National Hydrology Project (NHP) to Manage Procurements

Background:

NHP is a Flag-chip Project of the Ministry of Jal Shakti being financed by the World Bank. Under this Project a total Procurement of Rs 3600 worth of Goods/Works, Consultancies and Non Consultancies was envisaged. Ernst and Young was engaged as the Technical Assistance Management Support Agency for the Project and a Team of Procurement Specialists from Ernst and Young consisting of a total of 1 Senior Procurement Expert and 5 Procurement Experts has been Engaged by NHP to assist the almost 49 Implementing Agencies in carrying out their Procurements.

The Initial Problem:

At the outset of the Project it was felt that because of the huge number of activities which needed to be procured a prudent Systems for approval/management of Procurement Plans from each of the 49 Implementing Agencies and the subsequent activity tracking needs to be built at the Project side. Further each of the Implementing Agency had on an average 20 procurement activities planned and therefore it was evident that the Project would have to deal with huge amounts of data. Although the STEP (Systemic Tracking of Exchanges in Procurement) System of World Bank does the same work but STEP primarily governs itself to Tracking of Activities at the World Bank level whereas the need for a similar interface at the Buyer’s end was also felt.

Solution Suggested:

To solve the Problem a Comprehensive Procurement Management Information System under NHP was suggested. The Management Information System devised under the National Hydrology Project consisted of 2 Modules namely:

  1. Procurement Plan Module
  2. Procurement Tracker/Milestone Module

A. Procurement Plan Module

Under this Module all the 49 Implementing Agencies submitted their Procurement Plans Year-wise into the MIS System itself. The Procurement Plan template as designed within the MIS imports activity from the Annual Work Plan/Project Implementation Plans of the Implementing Agencies and matches each activity against them. The Template was comprehensive and included critical parameters such as Activity Cost, Activity Type, Procurement Method & Review Type etc. Approval were made based on checking the compliance against the above mentioned parameters along with parameters such as Availability of Funds, overall assessment of actual need, capability of the Implementing Agency to execute that activity based on past performance and how that activity fits into the overall NHP Project Objective.

B. Procurement Tracker/Milestone Module

Under this module all activities were categorised and tracked on real time basis the 5 Categories as given below:

  1. Yet to be started
  2. In Progress
  3. Cleared
  4. Tender Floated
  5. Contract Awarded

A Snapshot of module based on the above categorisation is as given below:

In addition the Procurement Tracker Module also enables us to track status of activities under the following sub categories as given below:

  1. Agency-wise
  2. Item-wise
  3. Category wise i.e. Goods/Works/Services or Non Consultancy Services
  4. Procurement Method-wise

A Snapshot of the Module based on the above categorisation is as given below:

Procurement Monitoring of all activities under the MIS has been designed for tracking the activities based on the originally planned dates. This exercise helps to map the actual status in real time. The module is then further linked to a dashboard where data in graphical/Pie Chart Format become visible to one and all.

Impacts of the intervention

  1. The Procurement Plan Module facilitates accurate Procurement Planning as huge data of around 1500 activities could be streamlined into a single interface.
  2. Data is most crucial to monitor the Progress of any Project. It is also critical that Data is both accurate and timely. As a result of implementing the Procurement Milestone functionality the entire process of data retrieval has become streamlined .
  3. With the help of the Procurement Milestone Module it became possible to know in real time the Status of any of the Procurement activity at a given moment.
  4. Moreover the incorporation of filters into the Categories and Sub Categories part of the Milestone Module facilitates data retrieval as per exact requirement.
  5. By Linking the Milestone Module to dashboard the Status of all activities is represented in a way that can be presented in Power Point or excel format for any Review Meetings.