Search across all content
projectThe service, "Electronic Quoter" began operations in a pilot version (minimum viable) for Lima and Callao on December 21, 2018 and has reduced the term of the preparatory actions to one day.
This information was sourced from "Electronic Quoter: A purchasing tool for efficient market research in Peru" by Observatory of Public Sector Innovation (OECD), https://oecd-opsi.org/innovations/electronic-quoter-peru/. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO).
Public procurement is the most relevant direct economic activity carried out by a government, and it has a significant impact on the economy and society. Indeed, faced with the challenge of making public procurement efficient, the Public Procurement Central - PERU COMPRAS (Central de Compras Públicas - PERÚ COMPRAS) came into operation on March 18, 2016, with the aim of optimizing public procurement. PERÚ COMPRAS, within the process of continuous improvement, annually develops satisfaction studies that seek to identify opportunities for improvement in the contracting tools it manages, among them, the Electronic Catalogs of Framework Agreements, and to allow us to collect from our direct users (public entities and suppliers), the problems and initiatives for the best use of this special contracting method. In this context, in the satisfaction study with public entities carried out at the beginning of 2018, the lack of information on the prices of the goods included in the electronic catalogs was identified as a recurring problem to process the budget certification, a document necessary to start any purchase process. We can highlight the following comment: "The prices of the goods offered in the Catalogs should be displayed in the application, to avoid setbacks with the Budgetary Credit Certification (CCP)". Indeed, after analyzing the problem and the initiative proposed by the user in detail, it was verified that this activity, which corresponds to the preparatory acts, could take an average of 68.1 calendar days in a selection procedure, which corresponds to the consultation of various sources of information; such as quotes, specialized web pages, physical catalogs, historical prices, among others. In other words, the almost 2,000 Public Entities that have been contracting through this special method were affected by this lack of information.
Faced with this, we verified that according to the rules contained in the regulatory documents of the framework agreements, the confidentiality of the information of the offers (price of the goods before being contracted) should be maintained, however, once the contracting was formalized through a purchase order, this could be made public. After an analysis of the available information (historical purchase orders), on April 11, 2018, a proposal was made to the Headquarters of PERU COMPRAS for the development of a web application that in a friendly way estimated the price of the goods contracted through electronic catalogues. The service, "Electronic Quoter" began operations in a pilot version (minimum viable) for Lima and Callao on December 21, 2018 and has reduced the term of the preparatory actions to one day. However, there was still the challenge of offering the service nationwide (scaling it) and also implementing the improvements collected from the users of the first version, mainly showing all the products contained in the electronic catalogues, since by using only the orders of purchase as a source of information, this limited to showing only the contracted products (leaving out the products that were offered, but had not yet been contracted). For this reason, the new design also incorporated the information from the offers in a summarized manner, that is, using statistical algorithms to guarantee the confidentiality of the information indicated in the documents that regulate the Framework Agreements. Finally, and after incorporating these improvements in the design, on February 12, 2020, the "National Electronic Quoter" was launched for the benefit of 1,969 public entities and as a consequence also for the benefit of citizens who make use of their services.
Our project is innovative because it optimises the activities that make up the preparatory acts stage of the public procurement process (when usually the improvement actions are oriented towards the selection and contractual execution stages). This project was inspired by the needs of users and the characteristics of the information available in the Electronic Catalogues (historical prices and registered offers). The Electronic Quoter makes use of statistical algorithms to estimate in less than a day the price of goods required by public entities. It uses a product search tool, with a user-friendly presentation and filters that optimise the search time, because it is based on artificial intelligence technology components. As well as blockchain, which allows us to preserve the immutability and transparency of the information.
The main allies were the logistics operators of the entities who, through their participation in the surveys, contributed with ideas to improve the pilot service of the Quotation System as well as multiple internal allies within PERÚ COMPRAS. These included its leadership, the Office of Information Technology and the Communications Office.
The service is designed to serve all logistics operators of public entities at all levels of government (National, Regional and Local) and throughout the national territory (25 regions), therefore, it serves about 2,000 entities. Likewise, the indirect beneficiaries are made up of the entire population that makes use of its services, which is estimated at 31.2 million inhabitants, according to the latest INEI census of 2017.
The overall result is to have reduced the time for preparatory acts from 68.1 calendar days to 1 calendar day, thereby simplifying approximately 155,822 annual procurements at the national level, for an estimated amount of $ 400 million dollars. According to a survey taken to measure the impact on users:
We had no major difficulties; at all times there was a willingness on the part of all the Institution's organisational units to collaborate with the initiative. Llikewise, the support and collaboration of the Head of PERU COMPRAS and of the entire team of the Information Technology Office, who were a key factor in the development of the project.
The service offered by the Electronic Quotation System is fully replicable, and as evidence of this, the OSCE took our experience as a basis for designing its Price Observatory service (https://portal.osce.gob.pe/osce/conosce/observatorioprecios.html), which is part of its CONOSCE portal. In addition, as part of the exchange of experiences with other international organisations, SERCOP of Ecuador requested, among others, technical assistance to learn the methodology for calculating the Price Quotation System, which was delivered in September 2022. (https://portal.compraspublicas.gob.ec/sercop/intercambio-de-conocimientos-entre-sercop-y-peru-compras/).
The experience is disseminated through various communication channels:
Budget: Not disclosed
Connect with 500,000+ public servants solving your hardest challenges.
Connect with 500,000+ public servants solving your hardest challenges.
Help public servants worldwide learn from your work, what worked, what flopped and what you'd do differently
Share your project
Log in or sign up to continue the conversation