What is National
Procurement System?
The national procurement system is the overall framework for
public procurement in a country including the legal framework, organizational
set-up including arrangements for control and oversight, as well as the
procedures and practices. In terms of assessment, it is typical to
differentiate between assessing the framework itself and assessing how well it
functions in practice. Conducting an assessment at regular intervals can serve
various purposes including:
• Identifying
strengths and weaknesses in the national procurement system
• Creating
a baseline against which to measure and demonstrate progress
Typically, an assessment of a national procurement system
will go beyond the public sector framework itself, and also look at the
relationship between the public procurement system and other parts of
government, the functioning of the national supply market and its relationship
with the public procurement system, as well as the role of civil society.
Accessing the
National Procurement System
Since 2006, the OECD-DAC Methodology for Assessment of
Procurement Systems (MAPS) has become a widely used tool for countries to
assess their national procurement system. MAPS provides a "standard"
for the overall framework for national public procurement system with a set of
baseline indicators (BLIs) against which a country can benchmark. MAPS is
structured around 4 Pillars and scoring is done at the sub-indicator level on a
rating of 0 to 3 where 3 is the highest. The four pillars are:
1. Legislative
and regulatory framework
2. Institutional
Framework and Management Capacity
3. Procurement
Operations and Market Practices
4. Integrity
and Transparency of the Public Procurement System
Recommendations for using MAPS:
• Combine
with an assessment of the country context
• Explore
root causes
• Scope:
MAPS is a standard framework that can be adapted
• Data
collection: Include data sources on root causes not only MAPS indicators and
sub-indicators
Challenges in
National Procurement Systems
The numbers of challenges facing national procurement
systems are many and varied, but some examples are included here:
• Compliance
with legal/regulatory framework
• Conditions
of service, incl. career paths and professionalization for procurement staff
• Capacity
and resources of a procurement normative and regulatory body
• Level of
centralisation/decentralisation straining procurement capacity
• Management
information systems
•Weak
links to planning and budgeting systems
…extracted from www. unpcdc.org
