Jun 30, 2012

Vietnam - Low IT professional skills barriers online bidding’s way

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VietNamNet Bridge – The implementation of online bidding systems on the trial basis has been facing big barriers, which makes it difficult to apply the preeminent mechanism on a large scale.

The number of 60 bidding packages implemented via Internet in the last three years makes Nguyen Son, Deputy Director of the Bidding Management Agency, an arm of the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI), feel worried, especially when this mechanism would be applied in a large scale in the near future.

Son said that the unequal information technology professional skills and different technological infrastructure of the parties joining bids badly affected the quality of online bidding. In many cases, technical errors made involved parties waste time and efforts.

Meanwhile, the ability to connect the database shared among government agencies in the e-government system remains limited. As a result, it is still impossible to check registered information and make online payment online, thus slowing down the bidding process.

“When developing the online bidding system, MPI has received the PKI (public key infrastructure) from South Korea, the system user authentication technology. It has also managed the free allocation of digital certificates to the subjects participating in online bids.

However, PKI technology used for digital signatures and data encryption remains a new technology in Vietnam. Meanwhile, the source code of the technology has not been transferred for the trial period, thus making it technically difficult to implement the online bidding mechanism.

The government of Vietnam plans to apply the online bidding mode on a large scale after three years of implementation in a trial basis, because it can see many advantages of the mechanism.

The most outstanding feature of the online bidding mechanism is that contractors do not have to meet investors and big inviters face to face, thus allowing to minimize the wrongdoings and cost savings and ensuring transparency.

To date, more than 3600 big inviters and 1100 contractors have registered to join the online bidding system, while 1200 bidding plans and 30,000 notices on bid invitation have been posted on the system.

The bid invitation party implements all the necessary steps of the bidding procedure on the system, applied for large-scaled bidding, limited bidding or competitive offers. Contractors participate in bids by making registration, submitting bidding profiles and proposed solutions on the system.

Despite the great advantages, the online bidding still has not been applied by many contractors. The number of 60 bidding packages completed in the last three years proves to be very modest if noting that hundreds of thousands of packages are carried out a year.

Experts have pointed out that technical problems are not the only barrier to the online bidding. Investors and contractors still cannot change their habit of joining bids on the spot, turning a deaf ear to the big advantages of online bidding.

As such, according to Son, there are too many things that need to be done in order to make online bidding more popularly used. Agencies and enterprises should be aware of the tendency of using online bidding in the world and of the importance of the mechanism. Besides, it’s necessary to upgrade the technological infrastructure and increase the transmission capacity.

“It would be better to set up a regulation stipulating the required percentage of online bidding packages and the punishment on violators in order to ensure that the regulations on online bidding can be obeyed seriously and effectively,” Son said.

Source: TBKTVN


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