Role of E-Procurement Practices in Fighting Fraud and Corruption in Public Procurement

Authors

  • Solomon Kyalo Mutangili Management University of Africa

Abstract

For a long time, the menace of corruption and fraud in public procurement in Kenya has been a major source of debate. The problem has passed on from one government to the next but no serious effort has been put in place to fight the vice. This study sought to examine the role of e-procurement practices in fighting fraud and corruption in public procurement. Institutional theory on corruption was used to inform the study. The study used a desk study review methodology where relevant empirical literature was reviewed to identify the main themes. A critical review of empirical literature was conducted to establish e-procurement practices in fighting fraud and corruption in public procurement. The study concluded that e-Procurement can be used as a gatekeeper for all bidders in ensuring that they follow the rules as stipulated in the system. Transparent procurement practices can stop any political and economic forces from interfering with procurement processes. E-Procurement helps to safeguard many public officials through its transparent and efficient system. It can be used as a barrier to avoid unnecessary demands and interference from people with a vested interest. e-Procurement is also useful in dealing with the intertwined relationship between public and private organizations. As public procurement is governed by the Public Procurement and Disposal Act 2015 (PPDA), which refers mainly to the manual procurement process, the study recommended that there is a need to amend the Act accordingly to factor in the e-procurement processes. This can be supplemented by an e-procurement manual/guide and other procurement documents in electronic form availed to the process owners for reference. The Government should implement stiff penalties for breaches of procurement requirements and capacity strengthening of procurement practitioners on adherence to procurement regulations. There is a need for instituting proper records management tools for public procuring entities and more robust mechanisms should be implemented in e-procurement to enhance its functionalities at all the stages of the public procurement cycle.

Keywords: E-Procurement, Fraud, Corruption & Public Procurement.

 

Author Biography

Solomon Kyalo Mutangili, Management University of Africa

PhD Candidate, Management University of Africa

References

Bertot, J. C., Jaeger, P. T., & Grimes, J. M. (2010). Using ICTs to create a culture of transparency E-government and social media as openness and anti-corruption tools for societies. Government information quarterly, 27(3), 264-271.

Caulfield, T. O. M. (2014). The anatomy of procurement fraud. Contract Management, 54(4), 52- 55.

World Bank, W. B. (2014). Building integrated markets within the East African Community: EAC opportunities in public-private partnership approaches to the region's infrastructure needs. The World Bank.

Neupane, A., Soar, J., & Vaidya, K. (2014). An empirical evaluation of the potential of public e- procurement to reduce corruption. Australasian Journal of Information Systems, 18(2).

Roman, A. V. (2013). Public policy and financial management through eProcurement: A practice oriented normative model for maximizing transformative impacts. Journal of public procurement, 13(03), 337-363.

Vaidya, K., Sajeev, A. S. M., & Callender, G. (2016). Critical factors that influence e-procurement implementation success in the public sector. Journal of public procurement, 6(1/2), 70-99.

Mansor, N. (2008). Public Procurement Innovation in Malaysia: E-Procurement. Available at: www. nap sip ag-research. Org/pdf/EProcurement-Malaysia. pdf.

Aman, A., & Kasimin, H. (2011). E-procurement implementation: a case of Malaysia government.

Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy, 5(4), 330-344.

Neupane, A., Soar, J., Vaidya, K., & Yong, J. (2012, August). Role of public e-procurement technology to reduce corruption in government procurement. In Proceedings of the 5th International Public Procurement Conference (IPPC5) (pp. 304-334). Public Procurement Research Center.

Fuks, K., Kawa, A., & Wieczerzycki, W. (2009). Improved e-sourcing strategy with multi-agent swarms. Paper presented to Computational Intelligence for Modelling Control & Automation. In International Conference. Vienna, Austria.

Betts, M., Black, P., Christensen, S. A., Dawson, E., Du, R., Duncan, W., & Gonzalez Nieto, J. (2016). Towards secure and legal e-tendering. Journal of Information Technology in Construction, 11, 89-102.

Carter, J. R., Maltz, A., Yan, T., & Maltz, E. (2008). How procurement managers view low cost countries and geographies: a perceptual mapping approach. International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, 38(3), 224-243.

Sun, S. X., Zhao, J., & Wang, H. (2012). An agent based approach for exception handling in e- procurement management. Expert Systems with Applications, 39(1), 1174-1182.

Sohail, M., & Cavill, S. (2018). Accountability to prevent corruption in construction projects.

Journal of Construction Engineering and management, 134(9), 729-738.

Shahkooh, K., Shahkooh, S., Saghafi, F., & Abdollahi, A. (2018). A proposal for corruption reduction in developing countries based on E-government. World Applied Sciences Journal, 4(2), 1-7.

Downloads

Published

2019-04-20

How to Cite

Mutangili, S. K. (2019). Role of E-Procurement Practices in Fighting Fraud and Corruption in Public Procurement. Journal of Procurement & Supply Chain, 3(2), 36–47. Retrieved from https://stratfordjournals.org/journals/index.php/journal-of-procurement-supply/article/view/276

Issue

Section

Articles

Most read articles by the same author(s)

<< < 1 2 3 > >>