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Annex 1 – Procurement principles Annex 1
Fairness and equitability
Fairness and equitability require that a procurement process be procedurally fair and non-discriminatory.
The procurement specification and decision-making criteria (i.e., the evaluation criteria) should not
favour any particular bidders. Also, the procurement specification should be written in a manner that
is technology-neutral. It should define a clear set of output requirements and service quality standards
independent of the technology used to achieve these requirements. All participants in the procurement
must be given the same information before and during the process, including any clarifications or
modifications to the specification or the decision-making criteria.
Transparency
Transparency requires openness throughout the entire procurement process. The process should be
undertaken in a transparent manner, in public and not behind closed doors. All information regarding the
tender specification and the procurement process must be made available and accessible to all potential
bidders before, during and after the process. For example, a pre-tender information notice published on a
central website or leading broadsheet newspaper can be used to alert all potential bidders to the intended
procurement.
In addition, bidders should be given access to a publicly available, detailed broadband network coverage
map to demonstrate where public investment will not be targeted – i.e., where broadband networks are
already available. This exercise should be conducted as a public, open consultation.
The requirement-specification and decision-making criteria should be made clear and followed throughout
the procurement process. Where government aid is involved, selection of a preferred bidder should lead to
the publishing of a notice detailing the name of the winning bidder, the amount of aid to be provided, the
intensity of aid and the technology chosen.
Competitiveness
Bidders should be selected through a competitive procurement procedure, to minimize the need for public
subsidy. Projects involving public subsidy can be particularly complex to procure. In Europe, a competitive
dialogue procedure improves communication between the contracting authority (in this case the
government) and bidders. This can lead to better designs and innovative solutions. Competitive dialogue
can also increase competitive tension and allow better value to be extracted from bidders. However,
competitive dialogue can be complex (see Figure A1.1) and costly in terms of time and procurement
resources, and therefore other options also should be considered .
1
Government award of a subsidy following a competitive procurement may limit market competition,
especially if the funding goes to an already-dominant operator or an operator that subsequently becomes
dominant. So, public network procurements should enable competing operators or retail service providers
to offer competitive and affordable services to end users. The award criteria should favour bids proposing
wholesale or passive network models.
Cost-effectiveness
A government entity should try to procure equipment for a broadband network at the lowest possible cost.
This can be achieved by selecting a bidder through a competitive procurement procedure (as described
above). This approach is different from awarding a contract to the bidder with the lowest cost – a process
that does not take non-price-related criteria into account. Consequently, the evaluation of a tender should
not exclusively depend on cost alone. The relative weight assigned to price and other criteria will vary,
but bidders should be advised of that weighting and evaluation criteria well in advance. Such criteria may
include, for example:
• geographical coverage,
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