Featuring a published paper by one of OCDex’ fellows, Engr. John Raymond Barajas of Bicol University College of Engineering
Abstract:
This paper presents a multi-criterion decision analysis approach to developing a procurement capacity index for local government units (LGUs) in the Philippines. The index serves to assess the resilience of LGUs in times of crisis, particularly in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study utilized two open datasets published by the Philippine government from January to June 2020, and identified five criteria for the procurement capacity index: total approved budget of the contract, internal revenue allotment, number of awarded tenders, number of tenders posted, and fund utilization rate. This study then employed the criterion impact loss (CILOS) method to determine the weight vectors of the identified set of criteria, and calculate the index as a weighted sum based on these vectors. This study found that the fund utilization rate and internal revenue allotment are the two most important criteria for determining the capacity of an LGU to secure goods or services during a crisis such as the pandemic. This insight is consistent with observations drawn from use cases in the US, UK, and Canada as revealed in reviewed literature. Results also revealed that LGUs can be categorized into three clusters based on their procurement capacities: low, medium, and high. Moreover, the developed index facilitated the ranking of LGUs according to their procurement capacity, revealing that LGUs located in Regions II, III, VI, VII, VIII, and X have insufficient budget allocation, thus strongly suggesting urgent intervention from the national government. Overall, the developed index can serve as a valuable decision aid tool to assist the government in identifying LGUs that need additional support to procure resources or services required to mitigate the consequences of a crisis.
VOLUME 2 of the OCDex Public Data Analytics Series
Data science and analytics has demonstrated its power in informing decision-making and problem-solving. Data can reveal trends and insights that would have otherwise been obscured. It can give decision-makers key information needed to craft effective and optimal solutions to organizational problems. It can help predict potential bottlenecks and challenges, so that organizations may come prepared when it happens. Data science and analytics is a sought out skill in the digital age.
The Covid-19 pandemic and its resulting limitations on mobility has forced many transactions and communications to migrate from the physical space to the digital space. This sudden global digitalization resulted in an increase in data produced and a subsequent increase in the potential game-changing insights that these data may be hiding.
While many in the private sector have been seen leveraging the power of data for business insights and maximization of revenue, the public sector is yet to catch up in terms of digitalization and data utilization, especially in developing countries. The power of data would especially help communities and local governments in coming up with efficient, effective, and inclusive policies and solutions to problems.
The aim of the 2022 OCDex project run is to bring data scientists and analysts together, and demonstrate how analysis of government data can be used to help solve problems in local communities. The project aims to demonstrate how it can help inform local policymaking and project planning, and how citizens and researchers can participate and help their respective local government units in overcoming community challenges hand-in-hand. This handbook hopes to convince local governments and authorities to invest in good data housekeeping and integrate data science and analytics into their decision-making.
This handbook features how academics and data enthusiasts used public data to help inform solutions to various community problems such as healthcare, inclusivity, and accessibility for persons with disabilities, fairness, and transparency in public procurement, and ensuring enough supply of utilities. Lastly, this handbook presents a replicable model of cooperation between local governments and their local researchers and data enthusiasts toward the effective use of data science and analytics for community building.
Authors: Barajas, J.R., Aspra, N., Gealone, P.J., Lucero, A., Padua, O., Ramos, M.
Motivated by ensuring transparency, fairness, and efficiency in public procurement at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, a team of engineers and faculty from Bicol Region (Region 5) in the Philippines collected, digitized, and analyzed public procurement data to inform the COVID-19 response of select Local Governments in the country.
Highlights of the Report:
• On average, only 2 out of 10 LGU contracts have been awarded in 2020.
• For every Php1 spent, approximately Php1 remains unspent in the procurement of goods and services made by LGUs.
• A total of Php481 billion were distributed across all LGUs in the country for 2020 but only 10% of this budget was allocated for the procurement of drugs and medicines. 40% of this budget went to construction projects.
• Excluding LGU contracts not posted in the PhilGEPS website, only Php10 billion (2.16% of the total LGU budget) was allocated for COVID- 19 related contracts.
• An equivalent amount of Php720 million was potentially lost from 786 LGU contracts flagged as irregular.
• Audit findings for LGUs were primarily centered on directing accountable officers to comply to documentary requirements mandated by existing circulars, memorandums, and Philippine laws.
• A logistic regression model with an accuracy of 91.29% was developed to identify contracts that are potentially irregular.
Short Summary of the Report:
From examination of 296,220 local government unit contracts, this project was able to develop a logistic regression model capable of predicting potentially irregular LGU contracts posted on the PhilGEPS website for the fiscal year 2020 at an accuracy of 91.29%. Validation of the model using metrics derived from the confusion matrix revealed that the developed model had a recall score of 1.0 and a precision score of 0.029. While the precision of the model may be low, the high recall score is deemed more important in this use-case since it would be more costly for an LGU to miss out on irregular contracts. Overall, the developed prediction model is seen to be highly beneficial as a decision support tool for LGUs since this could potentially narrow down the number of awarded LGU contracts to be legally reviewed resulting in a faster turnover of review cycles conducted within a given fiscal year.
The team’s collected datasets are available for download in the OCDex open data portal, attribution to the authors and contributors is required for use.
Are you interested in this report? Do reach out to us at learning@layertechlab.com so that we can directly connect you with the authors, as well as the documentations they submitted.
Using Philippine Government E-Procurement System (PhilGEPS) data of 19 local government units from years 2016-2018, four out of six key information requirements of local contractors and bidders were answered. Reducing the cost of acquiring information led to increase in bidding confidence, and a more concrete bidding and logistics strategy.
The paper was presented in the 2020 International Symposium on Technology and Society, hosted by the University of Arizona, Tempe, AZ, USA.
This paper explores how open government data can be used to influence suppliers and contractors to participate in public bidding, by minimizing the cost of information acquisition that influence bidding decision and strategy. The researcher conducted data scraping, pre-processing, and exploratory techniques on official procurement data of nineteen (19) Local Government Units (LGUs) in Albay, Philippines, and triangulated results with local government actors, contractors, and businessmen.
The study showed that the existing procurement data mandated by the Philippine procurement law to be released can answer 4 out of 6 key information requirements of bidders, thereby increasing overall bidding confidence. Using dashboards that regularly collate, preprocess, process, and visualize these data can help local procurement competitivenes.
“Process mining applies data science to discover, validate and improve workflows . By combining data mining and process analytics, organizations can mine log data from their information systems to understand the performance of their processes, revealing bottlenecks and other areas of improvement. “
(IBM, 2021).
A relatively new technology, process mining, is getting more and more popular due to increases and improvements in data production and management, and cloud technology. Companies and organization that use process mining can “see” the “current state” of their process workflow, and rapidly evaluate compliance to the “target” flows.
“Companies that adopt an incremental improvement approach, on the other hand, tend to spend too much time on analyzing the “as-is.” In addition, their current process analysis is frequently based on interviews and sticky notes, which executives sometimes regard as overly subjective and treat with justifiable skepticism. “
(Davenport and Spanyi, 2019)
Public procurement is a business process that is prone to corruption and administrative inefficiency, affecting the quality of service delivery to the public. Using state university’s three-year procurement data as a sample, a paper published and presented by Layertech Labs in the 7th International Conference on Behavioural and Social Computing (BESC) – Bournemouth, United Kingdom, explores the use of process mining on publicly available procurement data to discover the underlying structure of procurement processes of government entities in the Philippines, check for conformance with the prescribed process in the procurement law, and identify potentially problematic nodes.
In the paper, event logs were generated from official public procurement data and mined with heuristics-based process mining algorithm, using free, open-sourced tools. The discovered processes revealed a concept drift in publication of contract award, a point for inspection and improvement for the agencies involved.
Using the process miner, analysts were able to immediately detect and visualize drifts in the prescribed process, and pinpoint the specific process points (and actors) involved. Not only this technology will help speed up analysis, but the system will also allow LGUs, auditors, and even stakeholders to constantly monitor the state of their public procurement
To read the FULL PAPER (DOI: 10.1109/BESC51023.2020.9348306), go to IEEEExplore: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9348306
Interested to apply this tool in your business operations? Shoot us a message! learning@layertechlab.com
Follow OCDEX for more updates about this miner!
References:
IBM (2021) What is Process Mining? Available at: https://www.ibm.com/cloud/learn/process-mining (Accessed: 25 May 2021).
Davenport and Spanyi (2019) What is Process Mining and Why Should Companies do it? Available at: https://hbr.org/2019/04/what-process-mining-is-and-why-companies-should-do-it (Accessed: 25 May 2021).
HIV-RELATED PROCUREMENT DATASETS PREPROCESSING TO IMPROVE HIV-RELATED ADVOCACY WORK OF CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONS
The objective of this study is to use government procurement open data to inform Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) of the best possible strategies to optimize, and maximize their advocacy work. In this paper, Layertech conducted pre-processing of the Department of Health Region 5 procurement datasets from 2016-2018, collected from the official Philippine Government E-Procurement System (PhilGEPS) repository. The visualizations and calculations showed average prices of HIV-related commodities, procurement categories, average procurement timelines and patterns, procurement allocation per province, which CSOs, represented by Gayon Bicol, may use to improve their crafting of proposal and monitoring of service delivery in their HIV-related grassroots advocacy work in the province of Albay. The data also showed late posting of Notice of Awards in PhilGEPS by approximately -16 days for the entire Department of Health (DOH) Region 5, and -108 days on HIV-related transactions, which is not within the compliance standards as stated in the Government Procurement Reform Act (GPRA) law, thus, a point for improvement for the agencies concerned.
Fair, transparent, and efficient government procurement benefits the public. In this information age, where insight generation from big data has proven to be powerful, using the tools of Data Analytics can help ensure integrity and transparency in public procurement.
From years 2018 to 2020, Layertech has worked under the support and grant of Hivos’ Open Contracting programme on improving government procurement data use and disclosure. Layertech worked with the Local Government Unit (LGU) Legazpi city, academic institutions such as Bicol University and Southern Luzon Technological College, individual business owners and business organizations such as the Albay Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and Civil Society Organizations (CSO) such as Gayon Bicol LGBTQI organization and their regional network.
This compilation was produced to share experiences and methodologies of Layertech and partners, in mining government procurement data to answer advocacy-related questions of CSOs; to generate business insights; to help suppliers and procuring entities identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies in various procurement stages; and, to uncover trends and red flags in the procurement process.
Target readers of this handbook are assumed to have basic working competency in mathematics, statistics, and basic data manipulation. Working knowledge in coding such as in R and Python, would allow the reader to better appreciate the use-cases and replicate them.
Please NOTE that this handbook focuses on the data sources, filtering, and modelling methods used. Links to the papers (published AND manuscripts) are provided at the end of every use-case, and it is encouraged that the reader visit the links to view the full papers and studies. Some of the papers featured in this handbook may be updated, supplemented, and improved in the future.
You are free to use the contents of this document in any way permitted by the copyright and related legislation that applies to your use. No permission is required from the rights-holders for non-commercial use. Please credit and/or link to www.OCDEX.tech and Layertech Labs.
Attribution and USE of Handbook
Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.
DOWNLOAD THE FIRST VOLUME of the Procurement Analytics Handbook for FREE HERE:
This article and the manuscript were submitted by the research team and may be updated in the future.
Conducting this research was both a challenging and fulfilling task. With the alarming health issues surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, the world is both in a social and economic state of emergency. Life and work are on a standstill as many of us are deeply affected by the COVID lockdown. In spite of its challenges of conducting face to face interviews or data gathering, the experience proved to be a rewarding experience for us for we know that this is a significant contribution to humanity’s collective efforts in combating COVID-19. It is for these reasons that we feel the need for this research.
With the number of COVID-19 cases increasing exponentially, a large number of people are getting infected worldwide, in the Philippines as well as the Bicol Region. In this health crisis, availability of sufficient life-saving goods and services such as testing is essential in the fight against the COVID-19. Hence, supporting the health response including the procurement, allocation and management of essential health facilities and products ensuring that utilization of such limited resources are being managed efficiently is crucial. It is in this context that the study was conducted to analyze available data from the Department of Health (DOH) Data Drop (DOH, 2020) and DOH Regional Office V (DOH-RO V) to evaluate how existing resources are being managed.
The study mainly aims to determine and analyze the procurement transactions made by the Department of Health Regional Office V on testing COVID-19 cases in the Bicol Regional Diagnostic and Reference Laboratory (BRDRL). Particularly, this intends to provide statistics on the specimens processed by the Bicol Regional Diagnostic and Reference Laboratory. It also assessed the procurement management of the resources being purchased by the DOH for use of BRDRL to facilitate the COVID-19 testing and identified the procurement needs of BRDRL through DOH that may further enhance their operation on specimen testing.
How did we go Through the Process?
The study employed the data analytics methods by observing the steps as depicted in Figure 1 such as data scraping, data pre-processing, data processing and analysis and data validation. The evolution from data sources to analysis and validation of results passed through these steps.
Data Scraping. Data collection was done by scraping data from the DOH Data Drop dated July 11, 2020. Specifically data on testing aggregates was utilized with 3,781 rows and 16 fields. In relation to COVID-19 procurement details, data were provided by the Department of Health Regional Office V. Said data was composed of PR No, particulars, Approved Budget for the Contract (ABC), Contract Amount and Status of approximately 109 procurement activities from March until May 2020.
Data Pre-processing. Data cleaning of data scraped included filtering testing data from the BRDRL. 94 rows were filtered from the Data Drop with reporting dates from April 8, 2020 until July 10, 2020. Fields found relevant on the analysis of aggregate testing data were the facility_name, report_date, daily_output_positive_individuals, daily_output_negative_individuals daily_output_unique_individuals, daily_output_samples_tested, cumulative_unique_individuals, cumulative_samples_tested, and the remaining_available_tests. Other irrelevant fields and with NULL entry were either corrected or discarded. For the DOH RO V procurement data, only COVID-19 related activities were considered from the procurement data from March to May 2020.
Data Processing and analysis. After the completion of data pre-processing, the data were sorted, summarized and visualized. A plot of the specimens tested daily at BRDRL was visualized by plotting the daily_output_unique_individuals values versus the daily_output_samples_tested. A graph of the cumulative number of specimens tested daily at BRDRL was likewise prepared by plotting the cumulative_unique_individuals daily values versus that of the cumulative_samples_tested. Further, the BRDRL daily testing results was plotted with the scraped values for daily_output_positive_individuals, and the daily_output_negative_individuals. Finally, the remaining PCR testing kits of BRDRL was visualized with the scraped values for the remaining_available_tests. On the other hand, the procurement activities provided by the DOH ROV undergone processing by categorizing each activity according to its purpose, then computing for the sum and percentages needed for analysis.
Data Validation. The results of the study were sent to DOH ROV for feedback and validation before presenting the results to various stakeholders through a public forum. Comments and suggestions were taken into consideration. Consultation with the procurement personnel of DOH ROV shall be made for further validation of results. Further improvement shall be considered on the processing of next iteration of the study.
What were the salient findings found in the conduct of the study?
Statistics on the specimens processed by the Bicol Regional Diagnostic and Reference Laboratory;
Figure 2 presents the total specimens processed daily with results which could either be positive, negative, equivocal or invalid as well as sum of all unique individuals tested resulting positive or negative released from 6pm the previous day to 6pm of the reporting date. BRDRL started with a testing capacity of 34 samples per day since the laboratory had only one PCR machine. May 16-25, 2020 has zero samples tested since testing at the Bicol Regional Diagnostic and Reference Laboratory (BRDRL) for coronavirus disease 2019 stopped when Typhoon “Ambo” damaged the exhaust duct at the roof of the facility. With the two RT-PCR machines donated by the LGU Legazpi and a private donor, the laboratory in BRDRL can already test 380 to 420 samples per day, but so far 182 is the highest number of total specimens processed in a day, hence testing capacity has not yet been maximized and according to DOH RO V, Bicol has ‘zero backlog’ in COVID-19 testing.
The cumulative number of samples tested which refers to the sum of all specimens tested with validated results from the start of laboratory operation up to the reporting date is presented in figure 3. Further, the cumulative number of unique individuals tested which is the total number of unique individuals who underwent COVID-19 testing, regardless of result, accumulated since the start of operations in the laboratory is likewise presented. It should be noted however, that since an individual may have to undergo the testing more than once, the 2 or more specimen results will only be counted once. As of July 10, a total of 5988 samples and 5629 unique individuals were tested.
Procurement Management of the Resources Being Purchased by the DOH for Use of BRDRL to Facilitate the COVID-19 Testing
The remaining COVID-19 tests that can be conducted by the BRDRL based on the PCR testing kits they currently have is presented in figure 5. It is evident that as of July 10, 2020, 18,865 tests can still be conducted. It implies that there is available testing kits to conduct COVID-19 testing with Bicol having ‘zero backlog’ in testing.
The awarded procurement activities of DOH Regional Office V in relation to COVID-19 is presented in figure 6.
These are the resources being purchased by the DOH for use of BRDRL to facilitate the COVID-19 testing. It is apparent that the biggest procurement cost is on purchase of laboratory supplies followed by conduct of COVID-19 related campaigns, purchase of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), purchase of laboratory equipment and conduct of COVID-19 prevention activities. For laboratory supplies the highest cost is on purchase of the Viral RNA Extraction kit & Consumables with an approved budget contract of approximately 4 million which is used for testing COVID-19 specimens in BRDRL. COVID-19 campaign activities on the other hand refer to placement of Radio/TV Infomercials as well as various signages for COVID-19 response and containment. Procurement of PPE refers to procurement of surgical gowns, surgical masks, goggles, coverall, shoe cover and head cover which are vital in the conduct of the testing procedures. Further, laboratory equipment includes purchase of equipment such as LED Digital Dry Bath / Dry Block Heater and finally, COVID-19 prevention activities includes activities like accommodation or quarantine for health workers and technicians from NCR as well as anti-bacterial fogging/misting treatment to ensure that the workplace is properly disinfected, ventilated, and maintained as part of infection control procedures.
The Procurement Needs of BRDRL through DOH that may Further Enhance their Operation on Specimen Testing
From the identified COVID-19 related procurement activities of DOH RO V, approximately 8.6 Million worth or 77% is already awarded, 2.5 Million which is 23% is waiting for quotation and 41,000 or 0.37% has a quotation that is above the approved budget as presented in figure 7. This shows that most of the requested items to be purchased has been already awarded and that procurement of resources by the DOH Regional Office V for use of BRDRL to facilitate the COVID-19 testing is well managed with Bicol having ‘zero backlog’ in testing and available PCR testing kits. The remaining 23% procurement needs are presented in figure 6.
The procurement needs of BRDRL through DOH Regional Office V to further enhance their operation on Covid-19 specimen testing is presented in figure 8. These are the resources being requested by the DOH for use of BRDRL to facilitate the COVID-19 testing which are either still waiting for quotation or has quotation above the approved budget for the contract. It is evident that the biggest procurement cost is on purchase of laboratory supplies followed by purchase of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), conduct of covid19-related campaigns, purchase of laboratory equipment and repair of Covid-19 laboratory at BRDRL.
Conclusions
Based on the foregoing findings, the study concluded that DOH Regional Office V so far had shown to have managed well their COVID-19 related procurement activities for BRDRL based on data scraped from the DOH Data Drop and procurement data provided by the DOH ROV with Bicol having ‘zero backlog’ in testing and with available PCR testing kits which can be partly attributed to the strong partnership with the LGU of Legazpi City. Other local government units may replicate the partnership of Legazpi City with DOH. Likewise, innovative partnerships with business and civil society are needed since it is a fact that the DOH cannot win the fight in stopping the spread of COVID-19 without the cooperation and support of stakeholders and the public. Early detection and isolation of new COVID-19 cases is critical to managing potential outbreaks, especially as the government is considering gradually lifting quarantine measures. This makes testing all the more vital.
What’s Next?
During an emergency like the COVID-19 crisis, procurement procedures need to be as fast as possible as it adheres to the rules on Negotiated Procurement (Emergency Case) by simplifying its process as stipulated in the GPPB Resolution No. 03- 2020, however, emergency procedures still need to be public and open. Although the Department of Health Regional Office V was able to provide some procurement data as requested, yet, it would have been more beneficial if said data are disclosed publicly online, in the GPPB online portal, or in their website. With this, the study recommends that open procurement data such as the Annual Procurement Plan FY 2020, request for quotation, technical specifications, purchase order, and notice of award be made available to public since it may enable fairer competition among companies, identify red flags, as well as deliver better services for governments and citizens. Publishing data for each step of the contracting process is highly recommended to promote transparency and accountability. COVID-19 procurement strategies need to be rapidly updated to form a global, digital and data-driven plan since how the government manages emergency public procurement will play a major role in how COVID-19 be contained and how many lives can be saved. Finally, it is also suggested for the GPPB to establish an online platform to allow for an online submission and receipt of bids for procurement modalities by all procuring entities.
So what are then the perceived impacts of the study?
The findings of the study could serve as feedback to the Department of Health Regional Office V on their procurement management of the resources used on testing COVID-19 cases in the Bicol Regional Diagnostic and Reference Laboratory (BRDRL) during this pandemic. Further, the utilization of data analytics in this study could serve as guide to future researchers on the importance of analyzing data sets and how it could give meaning to a simple data, translating data on hand to meaningful stories, thereby building a model for a data-driven decision making. Finally, this could provide an open data accessible to the community members while reinforcing scientific cooperation. Being a researcher requires inspiration, commitment and dedication. Without these, no research shall be accomplished and realized. As Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said and we quote “I believe in innovation and that the way you get innovation is you fund research and you learn the basic facts.” Hence, this research will only find its meaning when shared with others and others learned from it.
(This article and the manuscript were submitted by the research team and may be updated/revised in the future)
With the widespread of COVID-19 as an infectious disease caused by a newly discovered coronavirus, the Philippines had a large number of confirmed cases reported from early of this year up to the present. This research deemed it necessary to determine and analyze the procurement transactions made by the Philippine Government as response measures during the first quarter of the Covid-19 pandemic occurrence in the country. This may serve as baseline data in the preparation of the Annual Procurement Plan (APP) and/or the supplemental one to respond to Covid-19 crisis. Particularly, this intends to identify the items procured during the first quarter by the government agencies as response measures to Covid-19 pandemic. It also evaluates the transaction details of the procured items, and determine the response measures initiated by the government agencies as precautionary to the spread of Covid-19.
How did we go Through the Process?
This research employed the data analytics methods by observing the steps as depicted in Figure 1 such as data scraping, data cleaning, data processing, and data analysis and iteration.
Data scraping: The collection of data was made through data scrapping from PhilGeps website along Bid Notice and Award Details for the first quarter of year 2020, that is from January to March 2020. As to procurement data within the duration period, the total number of collected datasets were 231,784. However, focusing primarily on Covid-19 procurement and removing the non-covid related procurement, this resulted to 245 data sets only. Other legitimate sites such as GPPB and DOH were also looked into. From Regions 1 to 15 including NCR, this was well-represented by various government agencies with 22 offices, 5 public schools, 8 barangays, 73 LGUs, and 9 Provincial Offices.
Data Cleaning: This includes the processes of filtering the PhilGeps procurement data if it is Covid-related based on its notice titles, item name and descriptions. Filtering also involves selecting the necessary fields found relevant on the analysis of data such as organization name, business category, funding source and instrument, notice type, procurement mode, area of delivery and the like since the datasets to be collected may be in the form of a machine-readable format. The keywords used were “covid” and “covid-19.” Other irrelevant fields and with NULL entry were removed. Data Processing. After cleaning the datasets, the organization names were grouped accordingly to its organization type to come up with a collective view. Stemming was used for the item descriptions and business category for easier analysis to remove the inflexional and/or sometimes the derivational. The approved budget was also sorted into data ranges. The “count” value were used in the analysis of each unique instances. The purpose of those processes was to get the unique value of each data to give meaning and help in telling the stories.
Data Analysis and Iteration: Visualization of each significant findings was made by curating data into a form easier to understand and make the necessary inferences on the results as per GPPB and DOH issuances. Afterwards, consultation with the Legazpi City LGU procurement personnel shall be made for presentation and validation of results. Further improvement shall be considered on the processing of next iteration of the study.
Results:
Items Procured During the First Quarter by Government Agencies as Response Measures to Covid-19 Pandemic
The items procured in terms of its business category by various government agencies as represented by the five (5) organization types is shown in Figure 2. Results revealed that the LGU, offices, provincial offices, and schools similarly had the medical supplies and laboratory instruments as their top procurement priorities during the first quarter of 2020 as prevention and response for Covid-19. General merchandise such as other supplies, printing, information materials, and the like, followed by drugs and medicines were found to be the next top-most procured items by the various government agencies especially those at the barangay levels. Since even during the early times of pandemic, some families and even individuals got displaced, that is why groceries had also been part of the most procured items especially by the LGUs. It is good to note that LGU took the lead in taking its initiative for the prevention of the spread of virus.
Findings also showed that Region 7 or Central Visayas, particularly Cebu City, had made the most number of procured items on medical supplies and laboratory instrument, and drugs and medicines during the first quarter of 2020. Region 1 or Ilocos as they also had a big count of purchases on medical supplies and laboratory instrument and so with the other item categories. Next to it were Regions 8 of Eastern Visayas and NCR with medical supplies and laboratory equipment, and general merchandise respectively.
Transaction Details of the Procured Items
Majority of the funding source and instrument of the procured items had its budget for the contract as approved by the Sanggunian followed by those from the General Appropriations Act (GAA). With the holistic view, since the study covered the various government agencies such as LGU, public offices and schools, this showed the utilization of two (2) alternative procurement modes. Results inferred that most of the procurement mode is on alternative mode which is Negotiated Procurement-Small Value Procurement followed by those posted from public bidding.
As to the budget utilization, for the barangays, the top-most procured items was on general merchandise with budgets ranging from 501,000 to 1M. With the LGUs, medical supplies and laboratory instruments with an approved budget of 400,000 to 1.5M was the top procured items. Grocery items were also found to be one of the most procured items by the LGUs to address the need of the displaced families and individuals with an approved budget ranging from 51,000 to 100,000. Almost similarly, other government offices had also the medical supplies and laboratory instruments as the most procured items during the first quarter of 2020 with approved budgets ranging from 51,000 to 4M and general merchandise also as the next most procured items. Further, the provincial offices and schools had similar to other government agencies on the top-most procured items which is medical supplies and laboratory instruments with budgets ranging from 251,000 to 8M and 51,000 to 400,000 respectively.
As part of the procurement process, based on the procurement details on the first quarter of this year, mostly of the award notice granted was on negotiated procurement on emergency cases. Notably, the lowest calculated and responsive bidder, and emergency cases were most of the reasons in giving the award to the concerned suppliers. Other reasons for award shown were lowest calculated and responsive price quotation and most reliable supplier.
Response Measures Initiated by Government Agencies as Precautionary Measures to Covid-19
The response measures initiated by various government agencies as precautionary measures to Covid-19 were identified based on their procured items during the first quarter of 2020. Findings revealed that from among the various government agencies in the country, foremost of the precautionary measures conducted were the availability of medical supplies for the preparedness and response, distribution of relief goods for the displaced families and individuals, the conduct of sanitation, and taking the initiative in disseminating information through an information drive such as seminars or orientation and printing of tarpaulins relating to Covid-19 preventive measures. Most of the measures were initiated by the LGUs and this may be inferred to the idea that the front liners were mostly came from the LGUs.
Significant Highlights:
The LGU, offices, provincial offices, and schools similarly had the medical supplies and laboratory instruments as their top procurement priorities during the first quarter of 2020 as prevention and response for Covid-19 followed by general merchandise especially those at the barangay levels. Region 7 or Central Visayas particularly Cebu City had the most number of procured items of medical supplies and laboratory instrument, and drugs and medicines during the first quarter of 2020. As to area of delivery, Region 1 or Ilocos had the biggest count of purchases followed by Regions 8 of Eastern Visayas and NCR. Majority of the funding source and instrument of the procured items came from the Government of the Philippines (GOP) with the budget for the contract of 51,000 to 4M as approved by the Sanggunian followed by those from the General Appropriations Act (GAA). Most of the procurement mode is on Negotiated Procurement-Small Value Procurement followed by those posted from public bidding. And, foremost of the precautionary measures conducted were the availability of medical supplies for the preparedness and response, distribution of relief goods for the displaced families and individuals, the conduct of sanitation, and taking the initiative in disseminating information through an information drive relating to Covid-19 preventive measures.
Conclusions
Based on the foregoing findings, the study concluded that the various government agencies had shown limited procurements on covid-related items in preparation for the pandemic although the LGUs had the most procured items during the first quarter of 2020 on medical supplies and laboratory equipment. The procurement processes adheres to the rules on Negotiated Procurement (Emergency Case) as stipulated in the GPRA. In addition, a number of precautionary measures were conducted by the various government agencies in the Philippines although further measures with urgency should still be initiated to help control the virus transmission nationwide and even worldwide.
What’s Next?
The study recommended that there should be procurement of materials to be used for sanitation and protocol set-up as preventive measures for the spread of Covid-19 especially to quarantine areas and other public areas mostly visited by community members. Said items may be considered in the preparation of the Annual Procurement Plan (APP) and/or the supplemental one to respond to covid-19 crisis. It is also suggested for the GPPB to formulate a policy guideline by expediting the procurement processes through an online platform by designing a Decision Support attributes in the system to further promote transparency and competitiveness. Lastly, there should be an urgency on the procurement of the most needed medical supplies and laboratory equipment to strictly implement the health protocols to help address the increasing number of PUM’s, PUI’s and LSI.
References: Cebu City Placed Under Community Quarantine. https://rappler.com/nation/cebu-city-quarantinemarch- 16-2020. March 15, 2020. Data Science Guide. Exploratory Data Analysis. https://datascienceguide.github.io/exploratory-dataanalysis https://www.gppb.gov.ph/issuances/Resolutions/GPPB%20Resolution%20No.%2009- 2020%20with%20SGD.pdf Peter Bruce and Andrew Bruce. Practical Statistics for Data Scientists. https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/practical-statistics-for/9781491952955/ PhilGeps. (ADV2020-007) Advisory For Client Agencies In Relation To The Declared Enhanced Community Quarantine. www.philgeps.gov.ph, March 17, 2020. PhilGeps. Revised Implementing Rules And Regulations Of Republic Act No. 9184, Otherwise Known As The Government Procurement Reform Act. www.philgeps.gov.ph, n.d. Sievo Global Headquarters, Procurement Analytics Demystified, www.sievo.com, n.d. The 2016 Revised Implementing Rules and Regulations of Republic Act No. 9184, otherwise known as the Government Procurement Reform Act. http://www.bsp.gov.ph/downloads/procurement/IRR_RA9184.pdf. n.d. The 2016 Revised Implementing Rules and Regulations of Republic Act No. 9184, Otherwise Known as the Government Procurement Reform Act. https://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/images/uploads/20160826-IRR-RA-9184-procurementreform. pdf
(This article and the manuscript were submitted by the research team and may be updated in the future)
Education has always been a “primary commodity” in the Philippines. With the implementation of the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act (Republic Act 10931), State Universities and Colleges (SUC) in the country are now mandated to provide free education to all tertiary students enrolled in their programs. Because of this, about 3.2 million college students were reported to enroll in the year 2018 alone [1] and this number is expected to double due to the implementation of the said law.
The Effect of COVID-19 Pandemic to Tertiary Education
The current COVID-19 has crippled the delivery of tertiary education in the country. Nationwide suspension of classes from all levels was hence declared as a mitigation measure to control and contain the spread of COVID-19 across all regions in the country. As a result, a temporary academic freeze has been widely observed from March 2020 until July 2020. This has been the case since various SUCs in the country are still addressing the unresolved dilemma of balancing safety and delivery of quality education to all SUC stakeholders upon resumption of classes in August 2020.
The COVID-19 Challenge to Resumption of Classes
With the sense of urgency to resume all classes despite the COVID-19 situation in the country, it has been widely suggested that face-to-face classes be shifted to online modes of learning this August 2020 [2]. This proposed transition, however, has been met with a huge resistance by various faculty, administrative staff, and college students. In the banner “#NoStudentLeftBehind”, online classes have been dubbed as “anti-poor” and “education solely for the privileged” [3].
As recent facts stated, only 17% of college students have been reported to have the capacity to connect to the internet wherein only 5% of such students have stable internet connectivity at home [3]. With these cited facts, it is expected that enrollment to SUCs this academic year would plunge to at least 70% [4]. Shifting then to purely online modes of learning this August 2020, hence, may not be feasible given the present situation of college students in the country.
Readiness of College Students for Online Learning – The Case of Bicol Region
Through the research grant given by Layertech Software Labs, Inc. and Hivos – People Unlimited, a group of faculty researchers from Bicol University College of Engineering (BUCENG) conducted a feasibility study solely focusing on this present dilemma. The capacity of SUCs and their students, hence, to undertake this proposed transition to online classes this August 2020 were thus reported to be comprehensively studied. In a pilot study conducted in the nine (9) SUCs in Region V, 160 (about 60%) of the 242 college students who willingly participated in a survey conducted from June-July 2020 were reported to have a monthly household income below PHP25,000. Even prior to the pandemic, about 60% of these students largely rely on cellular phones to accomplish academic tasks given to them and this represented a recurring monthly expense of PHP1,000 on cellular data alone. It was also reported that this observed expense is expected to at least double when online classes are implemented this August 2020. With these facts, it is without a doubt that these less privileged college students will have the most disadvantage if a purely online mode of learning is implemented upon the resumption of classes this August 2020.
Assessment of SUC EATing patterns – The Case of Bicol Region
With these described evidences, enabling college students to undertake the proposed online transition would then largely rely on the capacity of SUCs to deliver quality education through the said modes of learning this August 2020.
With the goal of assessing the nine (9) SUCs in the Bicol Region within the context of Education Access in Tenders (EAT), the same group of researchers from BUCENG looked closely into the information technology (IT) related procurement activities of such SUCs from the period 2016-2020. Upon a comprehensive evaluation of the collected contracts, these researchers reported two categories classifying the capacity of SUCs in Bicol Region to successfully implement the proposed online transition, namely “fully capable” and “partially capable”. “Fully capable” SUCs were reported to have largely invested on computer servers, internet coverage and bandwidth, library and learning managements systems, subscription to online databases, and acquisition of software for research and instructional use. These capabilities, as reported by these researchers, corresponded to an equivalent investment amounting to PHP241.19 million.
In contrast, while “partially capable” SUCs were reported to be to financially secure such investments, no relevant awarded IT tenders from 2016-2020 necessary to ensure effective implementation of the proposed online transition were found for such SUCs.
Collectively, seven (7) of the nine (9) SUCs in Bicol Region were seen to be “fully capable” of implementing online classes this August 2020. Though these reported findings implied that the Bicol Region as a whole is seen to effectively implement the proposed online transition, the EATing patterns of the remaining two (2) SUCs which cater to the majority of at least 3000 enrolled college students in the region indicated that much still needs to be done to ensure all college students, regardless of privilege, be given a fair and equal access to quality tertiary education. The researchers then strongly recommended that SUCs classified as “partially capable” benchmark on the IT related procurement strategies that of “fully capable” SUCs.
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