The City of Tshwane’s recently launched e-Commence and Procurement (e-CP) portal to digitise and automate supply chain management processes has been hailed for its potential to strengthen the fight against fraud and corruption.
MMC for Finance, Jacqui Uys, described the initiative as a key step in the City’s continuous work to root out corruption from within the system, “get value for public money and make procurement faster and more efficient”.
She said: “The previous portal has now been fully migrated into the e-CP portal which is built on the SAP Ariba platform with robust security and audit tracking measures in place.
“There is a full audit trail for every aspect of the e-CP portal and automation of basic processes such as verification of suppliers and low-value procurement.”
She explained that with the new portal, when suppliers register with the e-CP portal, they will automatically be verified against National Treasury’s central supplier database and restricted supplier database.
“For low-value procurement, the portal will be able to automatically notify all registered suppliers to submit quotations for a particular good or service, and then automatically evaluate submitted quotations based on set policy criteria,”she said.
One of the portal’s features is the contract management function for implementing robust performance tracking to check that suppliers are delivering on their contract terms.
Uys said suppliers failing to meet their contractual obligations will result in both contractor and the contracting department being held accountable.
“This includes blacklisting of suppliers and consequence management action against employees,” she added.
At least 18 000 notices have been sent to current suppliers whose registrations are in good standing to inform them of the move to e-CP portal and how to use it.
Uys said: “There has been extensive training of our employees on how to use the new portal which will enable quicker turnaround times for buying goods and services as part of basic service delivery.”
The Implementation, she said, would be rolled out in phases over the next year with the first phase focusing on supplier registration, contract management, and quotations up to R30 000.
She said R750 000, and henceforth implementation will focus on digitising the full bid specification, bid adjudication, and bid evaluation processes.
“We acknowledge that the City has faced scrutiny over several questionable tenders from the past. We are now working to fix the system and clean the house, particularly at supply chain management,” she said.
She added that action was being taken internally against all officials found responsible for wrongdoing and corruption-related activities.
“Our coalition government will continue to champion innovation that eliminates corruption and delivers quality services to all residents,” she concluded.
Pretoria News