The Open Contracting Partnership is seeking a software development consultant to support the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets Authority (PPDA) Uganda to improve the functionality and utilization of the Contract Reference Portal. This will involve making functionality improvements to the portal and also engaging with both internal and external stakeholders to improve utilization of the captured data. These interventions will ultimately improve the quality, availability and openness of the procurement data that is captured and enhance the ability of the Authority to execute its regulatory mandate.
About us
The Open Contracting Partnership (OCP) is a silo-busting collaboration between government, business, civil society and technologists to transform government contracting and drive systemic change using open data and radically-improved transparency for users. We work across sectors and along the whole process of government contracting to use open data and improved oversight to save governments money and time, deliver better goods and services to citizens, deter corruption and create a better business environment for all.
Our most powerful tool is the Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS). It aims to: support disclosure requirements in policy and law; link all stages of a contracting process; promote the effective use of contracting data by improving its interoperability and comparability; and enable faster reforms by encouraging the reuse of tools.
The Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets Authority (PPDA) is the principal regulatory body for public procurement and disposal of public assets in Uganda. Among its core responsibilities is to: Ensure the application of fair, Competitive, transparent, non-discriminatory, and value for money procurement and disposal standards and practices; and to Monitor compliance of procuring and disposing entities.
Background
The PPDA collects monthly reports from all Central Government Procuring and Disposing Entities (PDEs) and quarterly reports from all Local Government PDEs as part of its regulatory mandate and these reports are meant to summarize and capture the details of all the procurements that have been completed and contracts that have been awarded during that period. These reports allow the Authority to aggregate, act and report on procurement data in line with our regulatory mandate and also in line with open data initiatives.
In FY 2021/22 with support from FCDO, the Authority developed a tool that allows the extraction and digitization of detailed procurement data from these monthly and quarterly reports. Previously the public procurement system was unable to easily track the current public procurement contracts of each provider which meant that PDEs were unable to accurately gauge the capacity of providers before awarding them with contracts as informed by the constraints imposed by the current and unfinished contractual obligations of these providers. A provider contract Reference portal was therefore conceptualized and developed to automate the capture of these monthly and quarterly reports so that data on all the current contractual obligations of each provider is extracted and readily available. This data is then meant to be reconciled and published on the PPDA website for easy reference by all PDEs as they navigate the bid evaluation process. The expectation is that contracts are not awarded to providers who are already financially stretched and therefore lack the capacity to successfully execute new contractual obligations. This tool was ultimately meant to improve public procurement outcomes by streamlining the efficiency and effectiveness with which contracts are awarded. Data for central government entities has been captured for FY 2022/23 since July 2022.
Since the roll out of this tool in Q3 and Q4 of 2021/22, both internal and external end users have recommended the addition of improvements to the data import process and also for incorporating the ability to capture key additional data like beneficiary owner details including gender in addition to the beneficiary companies and their classifications. These recommendations have provided an opportunity for improving the functionality and utilization of the Contract Reference Portal (CRP) through both making functionality improvements to the tool and also engaging with both internal and external stakeholders to improve utilization of the captured data. These interventions will ultimately improve the quality, availability and openness of the procurement data that is captured which will better support the ability of the Authority to execute its regulatory mandate.
This project
This project intends to improve the decision making capacity of PDEs by making it possible for them to refer to the existing contract obligations of firms. A number of firms do not fully declare their existing contractual obligations during bidding and take on more work which leads to challenges in contract execution. A publicly accessible CRP that is web based will therefore provide a reference point for Entities to validate the information provided by firms. The information on contracts placed is now largely in the monthly and quarterly reports submitted to the Authority, thus making it hard for Entities to access. Making this information easily available will help Evaluation Committees and Accounting Officers in their decision making process and ultimately lead to improved contract implementation. The portal will also have capabilities to disaggregate data based on gender, nationality etc and thus help the PPDA to enforce its agenda on promoting inclusive procurement.
The PPDA developed the contractor reference portal to capture data from the procurement reports but that information is not in a format that is searchable and web based to be used by Entities. This project will upgrade the Portal to improve its usability. In future, as Entities all get onto the eGP the functionalities of the portal will be incorporated onto the E Government procurement system.
Activities
We expect the major steps of the project’s development to include:
- External CRP View - develop dashboard reports for external users team as per user requirements
- External CRP View – improve the search functionality for external users team as per user requirements
- Re-design the tool to be able to incorporate functionality that allows the capture of the gender ownership of the companies that are awarded public procurement contracts.
- Re-design the tool to support improvements in the data capture process as per user requirements.
- Improve the internal reports for compliance team and research team as per user requirements
- Redesign the Portal to be able to incorporate functionality that allows the capture of the beneficiary owners of the companies that are awarded public procurement contracts.
Development Integrations and Approach
The new functionality is going to be built on top of the compliance functionality in the existing PPDA Entity Management Information System (EMIS) and the developer will ensure that all the prerequisite and new functionality is developed and integrated as part of the compliance module in EMIS. The developer will work with the IT team to use an agile and incremental approach to designing, developing, and rolling out the required functionality.
The specifications of activities will be agreed between the consultant, contract management team, and OCP. The consultant is expected to follow an agile process of iterative development, that prioritizes demonstrations and working code, and that allows for changes in implementation details.
The activities can include calls or workshops with partners, organized with OCP’s assistance, in order to, for example: elaborate user needs; refine or validate the specifications of features; and/or conduct usability testing.
Data
This project will work with data and functionality from the PPDA Entity Management System (EMIS) where all data sources are built with open source Mysql databases. The consultants will have SELECT privileges to the relevant tables.
Budget and timeline
The ceiling for the completion of the services is 8000 USD. Work must be completed within 60 calendar days from award of contract.
Payment will be based on the following deliverables:
- Contract signing: 20%
- Design and improvement of external CRP views: 20%
- Additional functionalities to capture data: 40%
- Improvement of internal reporting functionality: 20%
Qualifications
- At least seven years of hands-on work experience in design, development and installation of bespoke IT systems and applications.
- At least seven years of demonstrable programming experience in PHP, Laravel, JavaScript, and MySQL databases.
- Demonstrated ability to facilitate and drive business processes re-engineering, validation of system requirements and implementation of new systems.
- The consultant should have developed at least three large full web stack bespoke applications and at least two of these applications should have been procurement sector related.
- Experience in the development of visualizations, and/or data quality improvement processes. Experience should be demonstrated through at least 3 completed projects.
- The consultant must be familiar with the enterprise architecture and the design components of the existing Contracts Reference Portal.
Application process
A submission must consist of:
- a technical proposal of at most ten (10) pages
- a resume
- references to one or more projects of a similar nature
- a price submission (1 page)
Reporting
The consultants will report to the Manager Information Systems of PPDA with regular check-ins with OCP’s Head of Africa and meetings with the OCP Data Support team as needed.
The Consultant will be required to produce bi-weekly progress reports to the Contract manager and an end of assignment report. The PPDA team must approve the final deliverables.
Closing
Applications will be received until Friday 1st September 2023