Useful information and resources for anyone looking to better understand or report on irregular practices during the procurement process.
Are goods ordered in time, and service level agreements in place, so that important public services can be delivered without interruption?
Schedule 4 and 5 of the constitution of South Africa lays out which parts of government have the authority and responsibility to manage specific functional areas, from liquor licenses to health services. See also the references to other sections of the constitution in these schedules.
The consolidated budget by function on vulekamali summarises the allocation to different functions of government in the current national and provincial budget. By selecting the function to see more detail, you can see the range of national and provincial departments budgeting for work under that function.
The department budget documents (Estimates of National Expenditure, Estimates of Provincial Revenue and Expenditure) outline the mandate of the department in the introduction of its budget vote chapter. Along with the mandate is references to legislation under which the mandate is ussed. These budget documents can be found by visiting the department pages on Vulekamali. Relevant department pages can also be found by searching for keywords related to a given service on vulekamali. You can then read more by accessing the department budget PDF from the department's page.
See the department budget documents (ENE, EPRE) for mention of agencies and NGOs receiving money from the department to assist in providing services.
The department budget documents (Estimates of National Expenditure, Estimates of Provincial Revenue and Expenditure) include descriptions of the programmes and sub programmes of the department. These are the planned activities for the department for the coming financial years. They also include a review of the activities of the previous financial year.
National and provincial departments publish quarterly reporting targets annually. These can offer additional indications of the activities the department should be carrying out during the financial year. Results are published quarterly for quarterly indicators, and audited results are published annually for quarterly and annual indicators.
Municipalities' SD IPs list the objectives and strategies to meet them, as well as budget allocations to these activities.
Review historical procurement data (under awarded tenders) to see what goods and services a department procured in the past. Make sure to align your findings with their currently-planned activities.
The budget and spending data for national and provincial departments is summarised by programme, function, and economic classification. The economic classification can shed light on the kinds of goods and services involved in the implementation of a given programme or sub-programme.
The technical requirements should be specified in the tender specification documents. A template is normally provided for bidders to complete to indicate how they meet the requirements.
Were the technical requirements specified clearly? Access the Bid Evaluation Committee meeting minutes to see who was part of the committee, and how specific decisions were made.
Are any technical skills or qualifications needed to make sense of tender requirements and bid evaluation? For some technical requirements, you may need to get the assistance of technical experts to make sure you are interpreting requirements and submissions correctly.
These are not necessarily all the questions that would go into an investigation like this. Try to think about what other questions are useful. If you have suggestions for important questions, let us know!
Download investigation worksheet: Printable PDF or Excel.
Are suppliers delivering the goods or services they were contracted to, as agreed?
When trying to gather relevant procurement information, it will be useful to be able to specify as specifically as possible which projects, assets, or physical locations you are referring to. For example, project numbers, names, and sometimes geographic coordinates, are available for infrastructure projects. Note these down to use later. If you can not find project information publicly, try to still be as specific as possible in future communication about the project you are researching - e.g. which schools, roads, or areas are affected?
See the worksheet "Are goods ordered in time, and service agreements in place, so that important public services can be delivered without interruption?" for more on how to identify activities of government that relate to specific public services.
Smaller contracts can be initiated by sourcing at least three quotes and selecting the lowest valid quote. Larger contracts must be initiated by advertising open tenders. In special circumstances, a single supplier can be contracted directly. If you don't find the information you need using the below approaches, reach out to the relevant entity and ask how the goods or services were procured.
If quotes were used, get the request to quote (RFQ) and all the information supplied to the quoting companies
When sourcing quotes for supplying goods or services, the buyer makes a Request for Quote (RFQ) available to specific companies considered to be able to meet the requirements, and sometimes also publicly. This, as well as the submitted quotes, would have to be requested directly from the procuring entity. They are not always made available publicly proactively. The buyer may have sourced more quotes so make sure to request all quotes and not only those considered.
Try to find the available public information about the relevant procurement. Look for tender advertisements and awards. Download any accompanying documents and make sure you organise them in a way that will let you find the right document later. e.g. put the tender number and what kind of document it is in the filename (e.g. RFQ 0073 Guidance for Local content.pdf).
These documents typically provide detailed information about the project requirements, scope of work, evaluation criteria, and other relevant details.
Service level agreements (SLA) detail what goods or services are to be delivered, the schedule for deliver, as well as the period of the agreement - when the contractual relationship starts and ends. While the tender documents are a strong indication of what would eventually be agreed, some details about how the contract will be delivered on may be amended or clarified in the SLA and this is what ultimately determines the contractual obligations of both parties - the buyer and the service provider.
SLAs are not generally made public proactively and will have to be requested from the procuring entity directly. The OCPO transparency portal is starting to capture this information but it is not very comprehensive yet so make sure to submit a PAIA request as soon as you know what you need.
If the procurement project involves infrastructure development, consider visiting the project site to gather firsthand information. Contact the responsible government department or agency to inquire about site visits or obtain permission to access the project area. During the site visit, observe the progress of the project, assess the implementation quality, and interact with the project stakeholders to gather additional information.
Proof of delivery must be recorded whether it is goods or services being procured. For goods, this may be a delivery receipt signed by the recipient, photographs of the delivered item, or a witness statement from someone who saw the item being delivered. For services, it may take the form of invoice reports detailing the services delivered as supporting evidence when the supplier sought payment.
The restricted suppliers list is used for monitoring purposes to ensure that the public sector does not do business with suppliers who have engaged in fraudulent or unethical practices.
If the supplier has not been listed on the restricted supplier list, raise this with the procuring institution. If they do not have a satisfactory explanation for not barring the non-delivering supplier, raise the matter with the OCPO.
These are not necessarily all the questions that would go into an investigation like this. Try to think about what other questions are useful. If you have suggestions for important questions, let us know!
Download investigation worksheet: Printable PDF or Excel.
Is government paying competitive prices for goods and services and getting good value for money?
Identify relevant orders or agreements. Refer to the "Are goods ordered in time, and service agreements in place, so that important pubic services can be delivered without interruption" guide for more on identifying relevant orders. You can also contact the relevant procurement department or entity.Once you have located the data sources, you can extract the relevant data from the orders or agreements. This data should include the commodity or service being procured, the unit cost, and the quantity of units to be supplied. If the information does not contain unit cost, but does have total cost and number of units, you can calculate an estimated unit cost, but try to request confirmation or more detail in case other charges were included in the total.
Before conducting analysis on the extracted data you will need to clean the data, this process involves removing errors and inconsistencies in the data sets. But watch out - inconsistencies may simply be unusual prices and valid data. Once this data has been cleaned it is ready to be prepared in a spreadsheet or database in order for it to be analysed.
Very little data specifying the price paid for specific commodities is publicly available. The best of this data has been the special releases for COVID-19 PPE procurement, and the KwaZulu-Natal floods emergency procurement. You will most likely need to request the data specifically. See the Guide to sourcing data from government for more tips on making practical effective PAIA requests for procurement monitoring.
Once the data has been cleaned and stored it is ready for analysis. To analyse the data it is helpful to:
When you are trying to understand why specific orders have that price, perhaps particularly high or low, it can be useful to understand whether there are systematic variations in prices. Perhaps something is much cheaper at the coast due to transport costs inland. Or perhaps volume discounts can reduce a price significantly.
Once the price for a particular good or service has been plotted in price buckets of appropriates sizes the following processes should be followed:
This can be done by looking at the histogram or by using a statistical test such as the interquartile range (IQR). The IQR is a measure of the spread of the data, and it can be used to identify values that are outside the interquartile range.
In order to ensure that the procurement process was fair and transparent, or to identify if there are any potential problems with the procurement process you need to access more detail about the bids as well as the selection process.
Access the tender award details including the bid amounts from non-winning bidders. Tender awards details often only include the amount for the winning bidder and only names of non-winning bidders. You may need to request the other bid amounts from the buyer. You will also need the bid evaluation committee minutes. These are not normally publicly available and will need to be requested from the procuring entity.
Looking at the other bid amounts could shed light on special circumstances in this procurement instance
There may have been other valid bids which could have supplied the goods or service at better value for money but were improperly disqualified without valid reason, favouring the winner.
Was a more costly bid selected when a qualifying bid was available with a lower cost? Was a particularly low bid accepted despite the goods or services not really meeting the requirements of the tender?
The technical requirements should be specified in the tender specification documents. A template is normally provided for bidders to complete to indicate how they meet the requirements.
Were the technical requirements specified clearly? Was the committee qualified to determine whether bids meet these criteria?
Access the Bid Evaluation Committee meeting minutes to see who was part of the committee, and how specific decisions were made.
Are any technical skills or qualifications needed to make sense of tender requirements and bid evaluation? For some technical requirements, you may need to get the assistance of technical experts to make sure you are interpreting requirements and submissions correctly.
These are not necessarily all the questions that would go into an investigation like this. Try to think about what other questions are useful. If you have suggestions for important questions, let us know!
Download investigation worksheet: Printable PDF or Excel.
Are preferential procurement regulations followed supporting transformation in industry?
The PPPFA sets out a number of different ways in which organs of state must give preference to designated groups in their procurement activities.
The National Treasury's Guidelines on Preferential Procurement provide additional guidance on how to monitor preferential procurement activities.
Summarise the number and total value of procurement payments by the values within the preferential procurement attribute you would like to focus on. E.g. if focusing on ownership gender, what proportion of procurement went to Women-owned; Partially Women-owned, and Not women-owned businesses?
Filter the preferential category summary data to focus on one or more specific buyers or procuring entities. This will allow you to assess the preferential procurement practices of specific institutions or government departments.
Summarise the preferential category breakdown over years and quarters to identify any trends or fluctuations in the allocation of procurement to different categories. Evaluate whether there is a consistent and balanced distribution of procurement among the preferential categories, an increasing/declining trend, or perhaps any significant variations.
Identify specific instances or periods of procurement that are of interest or concern, such as those where adherence to preferential procurement requirements may have been lacking. Determine the range of time for which you want to review procurement instances. Retrieve the tender advertisements and associated criteria for the identified procurement instances. The bid evaluation criteria should be published in the documents accompanying the tender advertisement. Assess whether the tender documents explicitly include preferential procurement criteria and requirements.
Check whether relevant bids met the technical requirements
See if the bids that would have represented transformation met the technical criteria. If they do not meet the technical criteria, they would not proceed to the next phase of evaluation considering price and preferential procurement policies.
Sometimes the tender award details indicate the score of the winning bidder. The Bid Evaluation Committee meeting minutes should include the score attained by all the qualifying bidders. Use these and any further motivation from the Bid Evaluation Committee to see if scoring was carried out consistently and gain insights into the decision-making process. Review the minutes to assess whether the evaluation and selection process adhered to the preferential procurement requirements. (Note: only information relating to the requesting supplier will be provided, unless the request comes through PAJA)
These are not necessarily all the questions that would go into an investigation like this. Try to think about what other questions are useful. If you have suggestions for important questions, let us know!
Download investigation worksheet: Printable PDF or Excel.
It is essential that the decision-making in respect of procurements and public contracting is done by administrative/technical staff inside departments/organs of state. Political duty-bearers, for example MECs, should have no involvement whatsoever, at any stage of the procurement process. This includes preventing their presence on BSCs BECs and BACs, preventing their influence on the decisions made in these committees, as well as any “passage whispers” which may occur to influence decision-making.
The International Budget Partnership (IBP) manual chapters 19 to 22 lists some of the questions you may want to ask yourself while examining information for each stage of the procurement process.
These questions are adapted from the Procurement Monitoring Guide of Transparency International USA (2012)
Vulekamali is a project by the South African National Treasury and IMALI YETHU
