'Focus on technical capability in superior product designation reviews to boost objectivity and reliability'

2024.09.05. The Fair Economy — The Public Procurement Service has sought to enhance the validity of designations by strengthening the discriminating power of technology reviews for excellent products.

The Public Procurement Service announced that it held a procurement policy seminar on this topic jointly with the Korea Public Procurement Research Institute on the 5th at Vesta in Seo-gu, Daejeon.

According to the PPS, the seminar invited experts from academia and research institutions in the field of technical evaluation for superior products to discuss ways to investigate and verify technologies applied to applicant products in advance for use in technical reviews; ways to utilize qualitative and quantitative evaluations complementarily during technical reviews; and ways to efficiently manage and utilize records of initial technology development and subsequent improvement history.

Lee Sang-hun, president of the KPRI, who presented at the seminar, discussed analyzing the effectiveness of technical review items by field, such as construction and environment, to improve the quality of superior product reviews and strengthen technical discriminative power, along with directions for improving the evaluation system accordingly.

The eight review fields for excellent products are electrical and electronic, information and communication, mechanical devices, construction and environment, chemical and fiber, office equipment, science and medical, and intelligent information.

Lim Byeong-cheol, director of the Public Procurement Service's Technical Services Bureau, said, "If a product that is not excellent in terms of technology and performance is selected as an Excellent Product, the credibility of the system will be threatened, so securing technical discriminative power is very important," and added, "We will reflect the various opinions presented at this policy seminar in the Excellent Product regulations through further review, thereby further enhancing the objectivity and credibility of Excellent Product review."