Roads and Highways Department (RHD) is responsible for the management of the National, Regional and District road network of bridges under the Bangladesh Government and also responsible for construction and maintenance of the major road network of Bangladesh. The Management Information System (MIS) of RHD was established in 2000. RHD is one of the biggest Government offices which introduce Information Communication and Technology (ICT) based activities in all sorts of financial and procurement aspects. In MIS of RHD there are 12 databases viz, Organizational Database, Personal Database, Road Maintenance Management System (RMMS), Bridge Maintenance Management System (BMMS), Central Management System (CMS), Project Monitoring System, Tender Database, Schedule of Rates, Contractor Database, Training Database, Document Database, Network Certification Database with all sorts of information of bridges and culverts with condition and road information including traffic, roughness, road condition, pavement inventory etc and financial project information, different manuals, rules and regulations, citizen charter and standard test procedures, design standards for roads and bridges as well as management plans for each area.
The RMMS is processed through Highway Development Management - 4 (HDM-4) to produce maintenance plans and GIS map. The RMMS database is useful to view ongoing work classified by development, revenue and deposit work with the historical report. Central Management System (CMS) is a software which is in house developed. It’s a computerize management tool used in field division offices to record and report performance of RHD by collating data of all contracts and all expenditures. The RHD CMS field module has been developed for managing Contract Information from its inception to the final process. This module is used to enter contract details including BoQs (Bill of Quantities) and Measurements through out the entire process. Its output allows physical and financial monitoring at field level.
CMS is an extremely useful tool for monitoring and therefore managing contracts. It will be used for preparing contracts, engineer’s estimates, valuations and payment certificates as well as recording budgets and expenditures for both the Revenue and Development budgets, covering both GoB and Foreign aided projects. All division office use most powerful Central Management System (CMS) for manage RHD’s budget system and without CMS no office can expense their budget and it’s a great achievement of RHD MIS. In these aspect RHD become Champion in Digital Innovation Fair 2011, organized by Prime Ministers (PM) office, Bangladesh i.e. A2I.
So it is the achievement of RHD. As a leading road agency under the Roads Transport and Highway Division of the Ministry of Road Transport and Bridges, RHD is increasingly relying on information system for engineering and managerial decision making keeping this goal in view, the RHD developed necessary infrastructure to support the information technology.
RHD intend to fair and transparent in all its activities. Under these circumstances continuation RHD introduces e-Government Procurement (e-GP). The national electronic government procurement portal (WWW.epreocure.gov.bd) is developed, established and maintained by Central Procurement Technical Unit of Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED) under the Ministry of Planning. e-gp is implemented under the Public Procurement Reform Project-II (PPRP –II) supported by World Bank.
The objective of the PPRP –II is to expand the e-GP networking and its scope in a way that the key sectorial agencies are under full e-GP within three years, with demonstrating its fair play, value for money, transparency, and open competition with enhanced accountability. Under PPRP-II, this component achieved the design and implementation of e-GP in the areas of publication of Notice and contract awards. In Bangladesh world bank is working with IMED to improve performance of the public procurement system progressively by focusing largely on four target agencies. And RHD is one of that target agencies and easily achieved the World Bank target.
Fiscal Year (FY) 2012-2013 World Bank (WB) target was 100 and RHD achieved 172, FY 2013-2014 target was 1400 and RHD published 1674 tender through e-gp portal, FY 2014-2015 target was 2400 and RHD publishes 3044 tender and FY 2015-2016 target was 3200 and 3429 and And this is not complete already by Dec 2016 RHD again publish 1483 tender through e-gp. Chief Engineer, RHD declared to publish all tender through e-gp and according to this tender publishing in e-gp portal is increasing day by day. Above graph shows the real picture. All RHD Engineer works with e-gp because it is hassle-free, without political pressure they can publish the tender in e-gp portal and this is the main achievement of e-gp and Engineers may work at night at his/her home because this is on line platform. If there is internet connection then it is ok for work in e-gp. So, it’s a great advantage.
RHD has been on track in implementing e-gp in its Procuring entities (PEs). It has good response from bidders to the system which is hassle-free, safe and secure and they can send their document online from home and this is what they use e-gp. The e-gp system is an online platform for the conduct of public procurement by the procuring agencies (PAs) and Procuring Entities (PEs) of the government. This is the only web portal by which procuring agencies and entities can conduct public procurement through a secure web portal. The e-gp system has been hosted at the Central Data Centre of CPTU. The PAs and PEs can have access to the web portal by using internet. The system will gradually be rolled out to all government PAs and PEs. Therefore, it is creating wider opportunities for competitions in the process of public procurement. The government is very sincere in effective use of e-gp as it enhances skills, improves transparency and accountability in the procurement of goods, works and services. The government declared the e-gp guidelines as per the section 65 of the public procurement Act 2006. Honorable Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina inaugurated the e-gp portal (www.eprocure.gov.bd) on 02 June 2011. Asked all government agencies to conduct public procurement through e-gp. From the above graph we see the awarded tender which is published through e-gp portal during the fiscal year and the volume of contract value is increasing day by day. It is the beauty of e-gp.
Here we mention the number of tender published through e-gp portal during the fiscal year. Here we also analyze that number of contract is increasing day by day through e-gp portal. Because In RHD all tender published by e-gp portal according to the rules and regulations.
Above pie chart shows the number of tenders which is published in e-gp portal. In RHD there are 10 Field Zones, viz Dhaka Zone, Mymenshing Zone, Barisal Zone, Comilla Zone, Rangpur Zone, Khulna Zone, Rajshahi Zone, Gopalgonj Zone, Sylhet Zone and Chittagong Zone; Mechanical Zone; in head quarter two wing i.e., Management Services Wing and Technical Services Wing published tender using e-gp portal. So at a glance we can see all tender information and it is the real beauty of e-gp as well as ICT for procurement.
RHD procures significant amount of goods, works and services every year. To meet this requirement of RHD a big pool of bidders/ contractors in Bangladesh exclusively involved in the supply of these goods, works, and services for RHD. The RHD allows the bidders to participate in tenders/Request for Proposal for these procurements through using e-GP portal.
The bidders face various problems during submitting the bid/ proposal through e-GP software and accordingly bidders contact to RHD personnel to assist them submitting the bid/ proposal.
Considering the problems faced by the bidders RHD arranges training program for the bidders. At this stage 500 bidders will be trained up. The main purpose of the training is to gain the knowledge about bid submission processes in e-GP. Mainly the training contents are: Registration of bidders in e-GP software, Document attachment during registration, Payment procedure for registration, Proposal submission with document attachment, financial proposal submission, Price encryption and decryption procedure, e-Tender and annual procurement plan, etc.
Several training programs for bidders were held on Rajshahi Zone, Chittagong Zone, Khulna Zone, Dhaka Zone, Mymenshing Zone, Jessore Circle, RHD Head Quarter on different times. About 200 Bidders from Munshiganj, Manikganj, Narsingdi, Gazipur, Dhaka, Mymenshing, Kishoregonj, Netrokona, Jamalpur, Sherpur, Tangail, Rajshahi, Nawabgonj, Chittagong, Jessore, Sylhet, Sunamgonj, Natore, Pabna, Narail, Khulna, Hobiganj, Moulvi Bazar, Rangamati, Khagrachari, Bandorban, Coxbazar, etc are participated on that e-gp training programs.
In conclusion, we must say that, RHD uses ICT in all aspect such as budget, payment using powerfull CMS system. That is, RHD is the only one government organization which organization use ICT before procurement and after procurement. ICT helps any organization to keep transparent, accountable and ICT helps RHD to manage information because with the help of ICT we can manage data and we can produce data as we desire. Finally we have to say that Roads and Highways Department is the pioneer government department to introduce digital actvities and to develop digital Bangledesh
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