Public Procurement Notices Management System in Turkey (PPNMS-TR)

Public Procurement Notices Management System (PPNMS) is a G2G and G2B web based application launched as a sub-component of Electronic Public Procurement Platform in order to facilitate preparation, submition and publishing of public procurement notices in compliance with the current regulations on public procurement in Turkey.

Policy Context

As a negotiating country for the full membership to the European Union, Turkey has embarked comprehensive economic, social and regulatory reforms being mostly formulated in its National Programme for the adoption of the EU Acquis which fully covers the public procurement sector as well. In preparing for membership Turkey closely follows the EU policy on public procurement and in the national programme has committed to harmonize its national legislation with that of the EU. The new EU Directives on public procurement introduced the use of electronic purchasing systems and electronic auctions to handle procurement process from the notification procedure and dissemination, to monitoring and electronic tendering. Turkey follows up both the IDABC e-procurement experts working group as well as the e-procurement working group created under the auspices of the Advisory Committee. Turkey applies a phase by phase approach for introducing e-procurement . It intends to harmonize its e-procurement infrastructure according to the studies prepared and pilot projects implemented by above mentioned working groups. The Information Society Strategy of Turkey and its annexed Action Plan which came into force on 28/07/2006 is the basic reference document identifying the e-government projects scheduled for the period of 2006-2010 to be implemented by the Turkish Government. According to the strategy paper, 9% savings is foreseen in 2010 to be achieved by the efficiency gained from the implementation of electronic public procurement which is expected to be utilized 90% then. In doing this, the Action Plan foresee the establishment of an electronic public procurement system within 21 months starting in 2006 in coordination with the Public Procurement Authority.

Description of target users and groups

- About 40.000 public administrations which are purchasing goods, services and public works. - About 100.000 economic operators which want to do business with public administrations. Most of these economic operators are SMEs. - Also civil society, citizens and other stakeholders which are interested in where and how public administrations spend public money.

Description of the way to implement the initiative

Project has been realized by Public Procurement Authority. No partnership has taken place. Multi-channel issues: In relation to the collection of the fees for the publishing notices PPNMS has a special feature connected to the relevant banks' IT system. Through this facility based on the data sharing and communication information about payments are automatically transfered to the PPNMS.

Technology solution

Technology choice: Proprietary technology, Standards-based technology, Mainly (or only) open standards

Main results, benefits and impacts

The time and human resources devoted to the preperation and publishing a procurement notices decreased more than 50%. Besides, as the PPNMS does not allow errnous notices extra resources used for correcting them are also saved. The notices are published in the Public Procurement Bulletin issued by the PPA only in electronic format as of 1st January 2007. Previously,the Bulletin was issued both on paper and electronically. Publishing and distrubiting cost of paper version was around 1.6 million Euro annually (transaction costs of the administrations involved are not included) 40000 procurement units of the administrations are regularly using the service. There are around 24899 registered businesses recieving the Bulletin. Around 30000 people per day are visiting the PPNMS portal. As the procurement notices prepared and published through PPNMS are fully in line with the tender announcement rules set by the Public Procurement Law there are no complaints about infringements of the rules on notices any more. The PPNMS is up and running since the beginning of 2004 and it is updated gradually. The number of the users and the visitors of the portal is also increasing. So it's impact and results are not a one-off phenomenon. What is more the PPA is building the e-procurement application on it. Innovation: PPNMS has translated a complex set of rules on procurement notices into a simple, easily conductable and error -free process. These characteristics of the PPNMS has encouraged the administrations to use computers and internet to conduct their job . It has also contributed to the skills of the related public officials on web-based applications and communication via internet. As all the transactions in procurement notice preperation, publishing and distrubiton of the Bulletin realised 100% electronically, no paper is consumed in the process. PPA requires from the administrations which wants to use the system to sign a protocol. Once this protocol signed, administrations receive a special code which in turn gives them access to the system without using electronic signature. In order to announce their notices in the Bulletin administrations need to obtain a tender record number which is unique to that procurement. After that all the transactions from the notice announcement to the contract signature can be easily traced using this number.

Return on investment

Return on investment: Not applicable / Not available

Track record of sharing

PPA had conducted a twinning project on public procurement with Italian authorities. This project was funded by EU. During the project, apart from other issues on public procurement, we had also exchanged our experiences on electronic publishing of the calls for tenders with Italian administrations. During a training seminar " Strengthening the Role of the Administrative and Judical Capacity in the Implementation and Enforcement of the Acquis Communutaire in the Area of Public Procurement:New Case Law and Other New Developments ; The System of Publ?c Procurement in Bulgaria ,Romania and Turkey ; Public Procurement in Practice /case studies" organised by Bulgarian authorities in June 2006 we had also a chance to introduce PPNMS to the participaing countries.

Lessons learnt

Once the public procurement legialation is analysed and programmed using programming language, standardisation was achieved and implementation errors was eliminated. It was observed that when an ICT application offers easily understandable and applicable solutions to the problems of the administrations users are promptly adopting this application. If effective utilization of ICT in the procurement process can be achieved, significant time and cost savings are not a dream. Scope: National