Public Procurement Service to Expand Agency Review of Public SW Projects

2024.09.05. The Fair Economy — The Public Procurement Service held its first review committee meeting on the 5th at the Government Complex, Daejeon, in collaboration with the Office for Government Policy Coordination, to act on behalf of the latter in reviewing the scope of public software (SW) projects.

At this meeting, experts in information and communication technology and SW participated as committee members to examine the scope of 13 projects scheduled to be commissioned by the Office for Government Policy Coordination this year and exchanged opinions to ensure their smooth implementation.

The Task Review Committee is a mandatory procedure to finalize task contents, contract periods, and contract amounts before ordering an SW project. Until now, it was conducted separately by each central ministry and local government.

However, this process has been criticized for wasting budget and administrative capacity and lacking effectiveness. Frequent conflicts during project implementation have also been a major source of disputes, leading to delays and failures.

To address these issues, the government announced the 'Measures to Enhance Public Trust in Digital Administrative Services' in January this year, jointly by relevant ministries, at the 34th Ministerial Meeting on National Affairs, and set detailed implementation tasks. This prompted the Public Procurement Service to pursue acting as the review committee.

During the process, to overcome challenges such as the Public Procurement Service's lack of experience in operating review committees and low participation from institutions, the Office for Government Policy Coordination decided to collaborate with the Public Procurement Service.

To ensure the successful establishment of the system, the Office for Government Policy Coordination and the Public Procurement Service held several meetings to discuss ▲ establishing an effective operation method, ▲ budget-saving measures, ▲ consulting on pilot operation plans and sharing operational techniques, and ▲ proposing improvements to the Ministry of Science and ICT's task review regulations and guidelines.

This case is expected to have a positive impact, such as encouraging participation from other agencies, as a model example of creating results through inter-ministerial collaboration.

First, by having the Public Procurement Service, a neutral specialized agency, handle project scope reviews, the service can minimize conflict factors between contractors and ordering agencies.

In addition, the burden on central government departments, local governments, and public institutions of repeatedly operating review committees is expected to be reduced, and the integrated hosting by the Public Procurement Service is expected to significantly cut duplicate budget spending across institutions.

The Public Procurement Service and the Office for Government Policy Coordination have agreed to develop various measures and actively operate the agency review service to ensure its successful establishment through collaboration.

The Public Procurement Service plans to expand the implementation of SW project Task Review Committees to all ministries in the future.