Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, and uh welcome to the launch of the Global Public Procurement Database, a tool that we believe will be useful to promote public procurement reforms and innovation throughout the world. I hope you are able to, to, to hear me. Uh, there is, of course, a strain on the, on the bandwidth, so I would, I would suggest that those of you, uh, who are, uh, at some distance from here, maybe, uh, keep it only on audio and keep their mics off. Uh, we had not planned this to be a virtual event, but given the uncertainty of the coronavirus, we felt it would be best that we can, uh, be connected remotely. My apologies to those of you who may not be able to have a very clear connection, as all the available bandwidth is being severely tested by the very large number of virtual meetings underway. The global public procurement database is a first of its kind knowledge product that makes public procurement information. From over 200 countries and territories available to practitioners, government officials, academics, civil society organizations. Private sector companies and citizens. It is a one-stop shop that aims to help improve transparency, accountability, and efficiency to enable an environment conducive. OK. There are, there, there are some with their mics on. Can you please, uh, unmute please mute your mics. Uh, so the global, uh, the, the, the global public procurement database is a one-stop shop that will, that aims to help improve transparency, accountability, and efficiency and to enable an environment conducive to global public procurement reform and the adoption of best practices. Having public procurement data from all over the world, just one click away is a powerful source of information to enhance transparency and accountability and using public resources. Uh, the Global Public procurement database is a unique tool that can inform the design of better public procurement reforms needed to accelerate the country's social development and economic uh growth. How important is it? Well, The total public procurement volume. Uh, globally it is estimated to be more than $11 trillion. That's almost 14, 15% of the global GDP. Efficiencies in public procurement are possible. And through those efficiencies, it is possible to create fiscal space that is, uh, that would be able, that would allow the countries to, to provide better services to their clients. Details on the platform are going to be presented by Hunt. Uh, in a few minutes. It is my privilege to welcome various speakers to this event. Let me briefly introduce some of them. Uh, my name is Vina Sharma. I'm the, uh, the global director for procurement with the World Bank. Uh, the event is that the, the event subsequently is going to be moderated by Raj Sharma. Who's a social entrepreneur and thought leader focused on improving $10 trillion in public procurement spending across the world. He is the founder of the Public Spend Forum and Gov Shop. And he's building a government, a global market intelligence and community platform for public procurement. It spans local, state, federal, and international governments. By providing market data and practice tools that address the most critical areas of public. His goal is to create open government markets. Uh, this can be used by the governments to find the most qualified suppliers by lowering barriers for suppliers to work with governments. Tiffanie Hickson, it's a pleasure to, to meet you, Tiffany. He's the Assistant commissioner of Professional Services and Human Capital categories with the GSA. She brings to the GSA leadership team, uh, she brings to the GSA leadership tour team more than 25 years of professional experience in the field of inquisition management. He has a reputation for effectively launching new programs and organizations, fostering partnerships between industry and government, and conducting the business of government in ethical as well as innovative ways. Tiffany, you are a thought leader. You have his teacher among public government professionals the world over, and we, we are very grateful that you, you agreed to participate in this discussion. Stella Makan is the manager of the Technology and Innovation Lab at the World Bank. During 2010 and 2015, uh, Stella served as the government of Moldova's first uh Chief Information Officer, and in that capacity, she led the digital transformation of government operations and public self-service delivery. A year before that, she served as Moldova Moldova's Prime Minister's advisor on governance and public administration reform. He has experience with UNDP, USAID, and international NGOs. In March of 2015, she was designated as a young global leader with the World Economic Forum. Brian Cook, and I hope Brian will be able to, to hear you because there were some issues with your, with your mic. Brian Cook is the senior manager of the real estate and facilities at the World Bank, and I, I think he started only 2 days ago at the World Bank. He was still very recently the director for Corporate procurement and administrative Services with the African Development Bank. Brian is an experienced procurement and supply chain professional with a demonstrated and proven history of working in the public and private sector in the international development, energy and natural resources. Hunt Lacachia is the senior procurement specialist with the World Bank. And has considerable experience in mobilizing teams for process improvement and the implementation of projects in data warehousing, business intelligence, and ERP technologies. These areas of expertise include business intelligence, data warehouse, procurement, vendor management, management information systems. Internet or web-based uh information systems, database and ERP technologies. Uh, Hunt is leading the work at the World Bank on e-government procurement along with other partners. Justin Valentine supports the World Bank as an international consultant. He's a proven resource-driven leader and change agent with excellent strategy and solution design capabilities. He's capable of tackling complex issues with a blend of best practices, analytic depth, and innovative problem solving. Justin has extensive experience working with private equity sponsors, multinational companies, and joint ventures in service and IT companies across North America, Europe, and Asia. Uh, ladies and gentlemen, I'm sure the next, uh, 2.5 hours are going to be extremely exciting, and I look forward to, to, to this, uh, uh, to the presentations and to the discussions that are going to follow. Thank you. Over to you, Hunt. Uh, Raj, over to you. Great, um. Thank you, uh, Hunt, and, and thank you, Rene, uh, for having me here today. Uh, and, uh, good afternoon and evening to everyone, depending on wherever you are in the world. Uh, I, I believe we have almost 800 people registered to attend today, so thank you for taking the time, uh, late evening to attend. Um, so, uh, as Vanne mentioned, uh, I hope everyone's staying safe out there during this very challenging time. And, um, I, I believe as a global community, uh we will uh get through this uh period together. Um, uh, I'd like to just start by um telling you a bit about myself and Public Spend Forum and then just launch into our agenda for today. Um, so, uh, I'm Raj Sharma. Uh, I'm the CEO of Public Spend Forum. If you did not know, Public Spend Forum is a global platform, uh, for improving public procurement. Um, our mission is to create open government. Markets um for $10 trillion or as Vne mentioned, $11 trillion in global spending by government and uh we believe that one of the best ways to do that is uh actually related to the topic today, uh, which is providing Uh, transparency and data, market data, best practice data, so people can deploy it and improve practices. So that's what we're really focused on and we're really excited about our partnership with the World Bank, with the bank. Uh, today we're also actually releasing some data on public. Inform site on COVID-19, um, basically market data and vaccines and therapeutics and how governments can accelerate hopefully developing a vaccine, uh, and therapeutics, uh, for COVID-19 so we all can be helped. Uh, so you can check that out on our site. Um, so today's, um, I'd like to go ahead and, uh, Han, if we could switch over to the next slide. Um, so just so you know, we've, uh, uh, today's agenda is really divided into, um, a couple of main topics. We just went through the overview, um, and, uh, the, the next topic, uh, is really the primary topic, which is the Global Public procurement database. Rene mentioned it. I don't want to steal the thunder here, um, and, and Hunt, uh, and Justin will walk us through really a lot of detail and How we can really deploy uh the data um available within the database and to better our organizations and the and the efforts within our governments. Uh, what I will say is that Um, in relationship to this database, uh, I'm, uh, personally very excited that the bank has taken this on as, as, uh, any other important initiatives, uh, because, uh, one of the biggest issues from a data standpoint, uh, that's missing, uh, that we've seen, you know, and, and, uh, I personally have seen and others have seen in our travels, most governments, if we look at all the people that are on this, uh, broadcast today, on this webinar, Um, are facing the same set of issues, that's what, that's what we've seen, 80% of the issues are the same no matter where you are in the world. And what really prevents us from improving them is really having a common framework and, and also an ability to share practices, and, and, and with this platform and with this database, and a focus on Uh, a worldwide standard for collecting and sharing information. Uh, I believe we can go a long way, uh, in just learning from each other, uh, and, and, and, uh, hopefully furthering our missions, uh, and improving government, uh, procurement. So, uh, with that, I would like to go ahead and hand it over to, um, Uh, Hunt and Justin, who, um, I know have a number of slides to walk us through, uh, to tell us more about, uh, the GPPD. And Raj, thank you, uh, so much, and, uh, Rene, thank you also for the, uh, the great introduction and, uh, setting the context. Um. And I would like to welcome everybody, uh, to the present, uh, to the, to the event, uh, which involves the presentation of the, uh, public procurement, uh, the global public procurement database, and then a panel discussion on, uh, SMEs and, and, and public procurement and government. Um, I wanna thank, uh, Raj very much. Uh, this event was to be a face to face event at the Public Spin Forum here in Washington DC, um, and he was really rolling out the red carpet for us. Um, and I just want to thank Raj for doing that for us, uh, and being a, a partner on this particular event. Uh, it's been, uh, a real pleasure. Um. And we do hope that everybody is safe. And thanks, uh, so much, uh, for, uh, attending, uh, this event. Uh, again, it's a, we were able fortunately to make this a virtual event. So, we'll go ahead and move on with the presentation. Um, my, uh, colleague, uh, Justin and I, we, uh, worked on this project, uh, together, uh, and we were part, uh, uh, part of a, a much larger team. Um, And uh we wanted to uh uh have more of a conversational presentation. So we'll go ahead and begin. I'll take part of the presentation and then we'll take part of the presentation. Uh, so, uh, we're gonna talk about, uh, the global public procurement database today. We're gonna talk about why we came up with the, the public procurement database and, uh, based on an information gap in public procurement, at in public procurement community. We're gonna talk about its characteristics and some of the trials and tribulations that we had during the data collection phase. Uh, and we're also gonna discuss, uh, some of the sustainability challenges that we've been dealing with and the next, uh, the next steps. Yeah, um, the, how did the global public procurement database come about? And basically it came about by folks consistently asking me information, random information about public procurement. I would get emails or phone calls, hey, Hunt, do you know what the percentage of, uh, public procurement is as, as part of GDP GDP in Kazakhstan? You know, uh, without digging, I, it wasn't, uh, very easy to access or hunt. Hey, do you know the, uh, uh, the e-procurement modules that are being implemented, uh, in the country of, uh, Ukraine, you know, uh, and these, and also I would get questions on the laws, you know, does a particular public procurement law, uh, support, um, life cycle costing or framework agreements in, uh, Serbia. So, These were the kind of questions I was getting and I just found it amazing that there wasn't, uh, it was one, very difficult to find the information, and two, there wasn't any, uh, community around the information. So the idea here is, is that we found this gap, uh, and that there wasn't any, it was difficult to locate country uh level information and there wasn't, uh, a worldwide standard as is for, uh, doing any kind of research. Um, and we wanted to also be able to compare country-level information. Uh, we don't want to rate, uh, anybody in the global public procurement database doesn't do any rating. It just, uh, captures information about public procurement, uh, for countries, um. And also makes it comparable. You can see countries side by side. One of the things we found is that there was a lack of standardization in the reporting and also in the terminologies. Uh, lots of times, uh, different countries have different terminologies for the same terms and also it happens in different regions too. Um, so we put together, uh, this, uh, proposal for the public procurement database, which the idea is it is a, uh, a web-based, uh, product, uh, database that would be, uh, uh, freely available, uh, for anybody who would want to use it. And it promotes, uh, promotes reform, um, and improve transparency, information sharing, uh, and the data is publicly available online, um. For anybody across the world to see. The mission is to facilitate information sharing and growth in the public procurement community and enable uh enabling uh stakeholders to perform in efficient and effective, uh, and consistent ways, uh, with international, uh, best practices. And the, and the vision was to be a one-stop, uh, shop online for all the various stakeholders in public procurement. So that's. The practitioners like ourselves, uh, government officials, academia, NGOs, CSOs, and various industry groups. Um, and I'm gonna hand it over to, uh, Justin. Thanks, Hunt. Appreciate it. So this next slide just goes over some of the key GPPD components and features that we'll demonstrate later, um, throughout the presentation. Um, the first big thing was accessibility. So the data is free, it's ready, readily available, it's public, it's at a global public procurement Data.org. You can download it in JSON or XLSX format. Um, the data we're collecting is a little bit different than the data being collected by our friends at the Open Contracting Partnership. We're looking at system-wide macro data, about 110 data elements per country that captures system level and not transaction level information. Um, the data was primarily collected via surveys issued to public procurement agencies and authorized government representatives with some other research being done via, uh, desk study and also pulling information from available, uh, World Bank, uh, databases. Um, as I mentioned, we're just presenting the data. There's no analysis here. The analysis is really meant to be done by the greater public, uh, procurement community. Um, so that, you know, that's really the kind of the purpose is to present the data and allow you all to do the um analysis. Um, some of the key areas in the product are the country profile, which will have all of the 110 data elements that were provided per country. It'll allow you to compare the countries, um, side by side, uh, to each other. Um, there's also a nice world map that allows you to navigate to individual countries. And finally, there's a document library that contains anything from procurement laws to procurement assessments, um, e-procurement assessments. So there's just a lot more information out there than may have been collected, um, in the database. Um, next. So, um, as we designed the database, we had an idea in our minds of what the, um, different types of data elements that we would need in the database, but we really needed a lot of help from the, uh, public procurement community. So we created two working groups. The first was a technical advisory working group made up of about 10 to 12 folks, uh, both within the World Bank as well as externally from uh open contracting partnership, industry, the African Development Bank. Um, and they really helped us kind of validate that the data elements that we were looking for were going to be of interest to them as stakeholders and potential users of the database. And even though there was about 12 people on the, uh, working group itself, we probably reached out to about 50 to 60 procurement experts globally across NGOs, academia, and industry to make sure that we're collecting information that others would find, would find useful. Um, the second group was the Information Technology Advisory Group, um, again, comprised of both bank staff as well as, um, industry. Um, and this really helped us figure out our technology solution. Um, one of our main mandates from, uh, the Trust fund and steering Committee was to make this database sustainable. And in order to do that, we really look towards, um, leading edge technologies such as blockchain, um, as well as artificial intelligence and machine learning. And we worked very closely, um, with the ITS Innovation Lab here at the bank to explore those technologies, and we'll talk a little bit about, uh, those results further on in the, uh, presentation. Next slide. Um, so these are the five categories that we came up with that you'll see in the database. Um, you know, the first is just basic country demographic information, GDP, uh, population, things of that nature. Um, the second category really starts to collect the kind of, you know, core procurement information we're looking at, starting with information around the public procurement agency itself, as well as the public procurement law and key clauses within that law. Um, and then we jump down to our third category, which is, hold on a second, um, Justin, you know what, I just got an urgent request from my director, uh, on, uh, it, it, uh, the VP of Africa is looking, uh, to incorporate, uh, e-procurement in many of the projects in Africa. So I'm just gonna hop over to the global public procurement database right now. Uh, and he wants to know the various or the, um, The e-procurement modules for all of the e-procurement systems that are in Africa. So, I'm just gonna run over to the bub uh the business intelligence reports here, and scroll down to available e-procurement system modules and just view this report right here, so I can quickly get this to him. Let me filter this by. Sub-Saharan Africa, and I'll execute the report. And here we have uh the various e-procurement systems, uh, in each of the countries with each of the modules. Let me just download that real quick, and after the presentation, I'll send that to him. I'm sorry to interrupt, go ahead. Thanks. And that demonstrates uh how easy um and quick it is to pull this type of information that before would have taken a series of emails, many days, uh, to collect and now you have this at your fingertips. And much like Hunt just did, um, again, this is publicly available, so anyone on the call, anyone in the world, um, is able to access and get this information at the touch of a button. Um, so in addition to, uh, e-procurement information, we then kind of went into two sections that I call more public procurement system performance metrics, and we looked at areas, uh, such as value for money, fair competition, and transparency, um, as well as procurement cycle metrics. So how long was it taking for the procurement system, uh, to work. So those are the 55 data element categories that we looked at. Um, and as I mentioned, we reached out to a broad, um, uh, swath of stakeholders, both, you know, with the World Bank, multilateral development banks, public sector, academia. NGOs, um, industry, and again, we want to make sure the information that we were presenting were, were things that they would find useful. So part of it is the information that you'll see and part of it is the information that you won't see. So information that wasn't able to be reported on that, uh, procurement authorities or sorry, procurement reformers may look to as areas for reform, um, for suppliers and business councils, um, you know, folks, uh, sorry, uh, Private sector that relies on a lot of public procurement, um, expenditure, uh, and is maybe looking to move into a different region, may look differently of, hey, how is Bahrain's public procurement system working versus Qatar, and that may inform a decision as, you know, what, which, uh, markets to enter. So that was kind of the questions that we were asking ourselves as well as the stakeholders as we were designing, um, the data elements in the database. Um, and as we'll, uh, present shortly, um, you know, we looked at, uh, 193 countries plus additional subnational, uh, groups to come up with 218 countries and territories to prevent, present, you know, the information that I just reviewed, um, in the different categories, as well as in our document library where you have a series of procurement laws, assessments, audit reports, um, that again, will present broader information that we were able to collect via our surveys and, um, other databases. Uh hunt you. Thank you. Thank you, Justin. Um. So, one of the, the, the big challenges with this project was the data collection. We really needed to understand where we were gonna get the information and we defined three different areas of data collection. The first, uh, we looked for information that was currently already available, um, and we, we, uh, we looked at many different places and we did find some information in the World Bank databases already and we were able to use APIs to grab that information and bring it into the public procurement database. A lot of this information, uh, from, uh, was economic information, population, GDP of each of the countries and things like that. The second set of way we were able to capture information is through, you know, uh, desk research. And so, we have a team that went to each country and searched the web. Uh, we searched public procurement agency websites, we searched public procurement agency annual reports, uh, public procurement laws, uh, for all of the indicator information that we were looking for. We captured that and we put it into, uh, The database. And then thirdly, we, we used uh the World Bank's um network of public procurement specialists that are decentralized throughout the world and their relationships that we have with the public procurement agencies in each of the countries. To be able to um get uh request uh or kindly ask, I should say, the representatives from the countries to provide us information and they did that through questionnaires and we had two sets of questionnaires. The first set, uh, we captured just regular public organization, uh, procurement organization information about the PPA, procurement law information, e-procurement system information, and some basic indicators. If the countries were able to complete that, we would send a follow-up questionnaire with more detailed information about the laws and the e-procurement system features and other performance. And then finally, uh, the last phase, uh, which is being completed now is The, uh, we, we provide the country representatives with access, uh, um, to the, uh, the public procurement database, and they can log in and view and update their country information, um, and validate that information. Um, so, uh, all of the, uh, the public procurement database is open to everybody, but, um, country procurement, uh, country representatives from public procurement agencies can log in and update their information. Um, and here you have an idea of the amount of data that we were successful in collecting from each of the regions. So this is from, uh, approximately 30% of the data elements we were able to grab. We were, um, very ambitious in defining our, uh, our, our indicators and, uh, And we were only really able to grab about an overall percentage of 30%, and you can see um the various percentages from each of the countries. And here you can see the percentages of the data that was collected from Uh, each of the categories and you can see obviously the country information we had, uh, from the, uh, World Bank databases, um, but the public procurement agency information and public law information we captured and we have quite a bit of, uh, e-procurement information in there too. Um, the idea is moving forward is that we would, uh, be able to capture more of this information as it becomes more publicly available. Again, we're only capturing information that's already, uh, publicly available. This is information that we collected from Europe and Central Asia. Um, this is actually from October. I'm just going to jump into the PPD right now and go to one of the reports and you can see that from October you'll be able to see from October to um. Uh, February when we completed the Uh, when we completed, uh, the data collection, we were able to grab quite a bit more, uh, information. As you can see, countries that, uh, really, uh, participated, uh, we, we got a lot more, uh, information from them than those where we just did rec desk research. Um, So I'll hand it back over to Justin. Thanks, Han. So another key mandate um from our steering committee was to make this database sustainable. So not just to collect information during the first year and build the product, but also make it uh easy to collect information for multiple years moving forward. Um, and the main goal here was to kind of reduce both financial and physical resources in that data collection effort. So, we thought this was going to be quite easy because it was 2018 at the time and a lot of these databases have probably figured this out and we thought we would just imitate what other databases had done. So we surveyed about 13 products that were collecting similar financial or procurement related information. Unfortunately found out that almost none of them really use any advanced technology or automation. In order to collect the information. I think 11 of the 13 products uh used exclusively desk research and manual enhancement. I believe only 1 of the products, I was the boost database used any APIs and then a very small product that I think was collecting information from about 7 countries was used. Using, you know, disruptive technologies such as web crawlers and bots to help them collect the information. So, unfortunately, where we thought this was going to be easy to automate, um, we found out we didn't have any, um, good examples for the, again, macro systems level information we were collecting, uh, to use as, um, you know, a, a, a model for us to imitate. So we kind of had to start from scratch. Um, and fortunately, Pick up the next slide, um, we have our ITS, um, innovation, uh, lab run by, um, Stella McConn, and we went to them as well as some, uh, industry partners, um, the American Council for Technology and Industry Advisory Council, which is a, um, US based, um, public-private partnership that works on using technology to, uh, for the advancement of, uh, government efficiency. And we asked them to take a look at our business processes and tell us what the applicability of AI. And specifically blockchain were to this product, um, and unfortunately, and I'll let Hun explain a little bit more for blockchain, um, ITS said absolutely not. So we didn't like that answer, so we went to ACT IAC and ran it through one of their rubrics, and they also came back and said absolutely not for this, for this product. It was IF and it was a bit heartbreaking, you know, it was, uh, during, uh, the, the real hype of blockchain, uh, about 18 months ago when we were designing this. And we were thinking, oh my gosh, you know, we've got a, a global database, uh, that's gonna be online and we're looking, you know, for, to provide trust about the information and everything like that. And when we, you know, we, uh, when we work with, uh, the innovation lab and our, our other, um, resources, what we found is that, uh, we, that we learned quite a bit about blockchain and that blockchain is more meant to be, uh, for transactional information, not for the macro type of information that we're, uh. That we're capturing in the, uh, in the global public procurement data. So it was a bit of a letdown, but we were able to use a lot of, uh, you know, the traditional technologies to build the system that we were very familiar with. Yup. So after 50 to 100 people told us that we couldn't use blockchain, we finally got the message. Uh, but fortunately, um, they said that AI actually would be, um, a machine learning would be uh potentially useful in the areas of secondary data collection. So that would be, um, you know, taking, uh, public procurement agency reports, um, scanning them. Um, you know, identifying keywords and then, uh, through the use of bots and machine learning, trying to train, um, and kind of automate the process of pulling information from these public procurement agency reports and, you know, either auto populating them into the database or at least presenting them in a format that would make it, um, fairly easy for a user to quickly identify the correct elements and then, you know, upload into the database. Um, so we tried that, uh, in the next slide, um, first with our ITS innovation lab, and then also during our production build. And we found out one key thing, um, that, you know, AI, at least the AI that was available to us, maybe there's more sophisticated, um, AI out there, but, uh, what was available to us, um, really requires standardized templates to be the most effective and that unfortunately is the one thing that's completely lacking for the type of data that we're looking at. Um, so, you know, all of these public procurement agency reports are manually created. Um, there's no international standardized format. Um, things are thrown into the tables very differently, and, um, AI works best if it's paragraphed, at least for natural language processing where the information is presented in paragraph form. All of the numerical data we're looking for is presented in various types of tables, charts, graphs, etc. and honestly, the bots just had a really difficult time, um. With the non-standard formats differentiating and pulling that information out in a way that we could use, so we had to resort back to, um, unfortunately, desk research, surveys, and, you know, complete manual uploading with the one exception of some information we were able. Able to pull via API from some other established databases. So, um, we hope as this, um, you know, area matures that we'll be able to kind of automate this process a little bit better moving forward, but it was not very successful in our, uh, multiple attempts, uh, during this product build. So our main um learning around that, as I just mentioned was, you know, not having any sort of standardized reports. Um, the other issue was actually not a lot of reports are made publicly available, so there's also limited data that we could train, um, the bots on. So that was again a kind of a secondary, uh sorry, another issue that prevented us from really um making much, much progress in AI, um, which kind of led us to a couple of sustainability recommendations. So one, we're going to limit the frequency of the data updates to once annually. Um, 2, we are decentralizing data updates. So we have a number of registered users who are authorized World Bank or government representatives who will have the authority and the ability to upload information, um, in the future, which should, uh, take away from having to have a centralized body manage that data collection process. And then lastly, um, we're going to be pushing for public. Public procurement agencies to use a standardized template that um we've already uh created um that if they could put the information that we're looking for in this template, then that would make it much easier to automate this process and train bots to kind of pull out the exact information that we're looking for, um, moving forward. So that was kind of our key findings and recommendations for how we will improve this product, uh, as we move forward. Thank you very much, uh, Justin. Um, so just going real quick through, uh, the core functionalities we have country profiles. In the country profile, you can see all of the various indicators grouped under their categories. Um, for authorized users, those are country representatives. They can, uh, log in and, uh, uh, validate and, uh, update and add information, uh, to their country profiles. We have an interactive world map. Um, we also have the ability to, uh, compare different, uh, country profiles, which is, uh, very beneficial for, um, very beneficial for, uh, folks who analyze the difference. Uh Uh, uh, yeah, um, so we also have, uh, a document library that we, uh, you, there's many different, uh, reports out there such as An reports, uh, and, uh, various other reports. Um Uh, the other thing is you can download uh the country profile information into an Excel spreadsheet or Jason file. Uh, you can also, when you compare country profiles, you can download that into a, um, Uh, into an Excel spreadsheet or JSON file. And in fact, you can download the entire, uh, database into an, uh, Excel spreadsheet or, uh, or JSON, uh, format. So, it makes it very, um, Uh, so, and here is the, uh, information, uh, or a screenshot of the site. Uh, you can access it. Uh, uh, the links have, uh, are, will be provided, um. You can do an advanced search. One of the things I like about this is down here for e-procurement systems, you can click check yes if you want to see if an e-procurement system is compliant for OCDS. You can also see particular e-procurement systems and their various modules, um, and you can see different countries' income levels. Um, here's the world map. It's, uh, interactive. You can slide around and get, uh, particular information and then click on that, uh, country profile and go straight to the country profile, and here is the document management system which allows you to search by year or country or document type or title for any of the documents you might be interested in. See, uh, and, OK, and here is the, see if this works. Uh, this is the country, uh, profile. It's not, uh, uh, showing correctly, but, uh, you can kind of get an idea of the information in the country profile. There it is. So this is the country profile for Albania. And you can see the various indicators and, and some of the answers associated with that. Um, Then, uh, moving forward, we will be, uh, uh, we're collaborating with the EU, with the Asian Development Bank and the African African Development Bank, uh, on the next iteration of the GPPD. Uh, we're also going to start our data collection for calendar year 2019. Uh, and we're, we're push, uh, there's a push for public procurement authorities to put together a standard country profile annex. Um, uh, in their annual public reports, this will help to standardize a lot of this data, um, one for collecting it and one for publishing it. And also we do want to, you know, as, as things change in the public procurement community, we want to get our, uh, technical procurement experts back together and review, uh, the, the GPP indicators and do some enhancements or modifications. Uh, and that's, that's the presentation right there. Uh, anybody is welcome to contact, uh, myself or Justin. Um, the, uh, there's the URL for the website. Um, the motto that we've come up with for the global public procurement database is to share, compare, and improve. And, uh, we hope everybody has the opportunity to, uh, use the database and, uh, and, and, uh, benefit from the information. Thanks so much. Thanks, Justin, for uh for helping out uh on the presentation and I'm gonna hand it over to um. Uh, hand it over to, uh, Raj. Great, um, thank you, Hunt. Um, so I think, um, just given time, uh, I'm sure there's a few questions. Uh, we'll hold the questions till later and we'll jump into the panel discussion if that makes sense. Um, so that's a great idea, um. Uh, thank you, Han and Justin, and a lot of valuable information and uh, I've been digging in a little bit and I just, just being able to, uh, really quickly generate some of those metrics is great. And, uh, I'm certain that that data will continue to improve as, uh, over time. Um, so, uh, so we want to, uh, jump into the second part of our agenda today, and, uh, that's, uh, our panel. I'm very excited to moderate. And, and the, uh, panel today is on a very, very important topic, uh, especially, I think again, within the current context of what's going on, um, government, Uh, can provide a lot of business opportunities, right, to, and, and stability to, uh, companies. So, uh, today's topic is attracting small and medium enterprises to government. Uh, it's a topic that I've worked on extensively, um, and, and, and held a lot of these types of panels and survey data. And so today, uh, without, um, you know, jumping without delaying this further, um. Uh, jump into uh the questions we have for the panel today. Uh, we have, uh, Vienna, who you heard earlier, Vina Sharma, and then we have Tiff Tiffany Hickson from, uh, US, uh, General Services Administration. We also have from the World Bank, Stella Mahan, um, and, and, um, and then Brian Cook, um, who's recently moved over, I believe, from African Development Bank. I'm not sure if Brian was able to, uh, connect. Um, so if we can, um, maybe take the PowerPoint away and, uh, just put everyone on camera, and if you wouldn't mind the panelists, uh, if we could just all come on camera, uh, so everyone can see you. Um, so I'll just start off, um, uh, by just kind of setting the tone here and then, uh, jump into questions. But as we know, um, You know, government procurement has a set of rules that are supposed to make it easier, uh, definitely more transparent and accountable, uh, as we spend government money. Uh, however, um, some of the things, uh, over time that have happened, whether it's, uh, a set of regulations and policies that have become overly cumbersome, or complexity of processes, um, or just lack of knowledge of markets, there are a lot of those issues that have created barriers for small companies in terms of participation. Participation in government opportunities. So those are the barriers to entry, as we call them. Um, and the impact, of course, is the best companies out there, many companies, uh, don't look at government as an attractive opportunity, and, and, and those that do sometimes bear so much cost that it makes it really expensive, and then we all end up paying for it. Uh, good news is that there is a growing recognition, uh, definitely on the part of business, but also on the part of government that, uh, this is an issue. And so we see a lot of, uh, initiatives and, uh, hopefully, um, you know, solutions that we're seeing taking place. So today, uh, today's panel discussion, we'll discuss a little bit the challenges, but more importantly, what I'm interested in is really hearing more about the innovative approaches, right? And solutions that are taking place and how we can learn from them and then apply them, whether it's within, you know, our central government or across our agencies, depending on what role we play. Uh, just one final thing, please, uh, submit any questions on the chat, and we'll try to get to them, uh, as, as we go through this conversation. All right, let me just go ahead and jump in. So the first question, uh, I'd like each person to just introduce themselves briefly, and, and then in less than one minute, um, Provide an example, one example of a change taking place in the public sector that you believe will make it easier to attract SMEs to government. So introduction and, and, and just less than a minute on uh a change taking place that's for the better for SMEs. Um, maybe, uh, we can start with uh, uh, Stella, or, or whoever wants to start. I can't see anyone right now, so. I can start. Uh, good, good afternoon, everyone. Uh thank you for the opportunity. Uh, I will probably speak from, uh, uh, from my experience at the World Bank where we've been exploring with emerging tech. And the previous experience in the government of Moldova where again we were looking at how we can improve public service delivery by bringing by modernizing internal processes and bringing technology to to our operations. So I think what we see across the across the public sector is a huge demand and a big drive to innovate. Uh, and to adopt, uh, technology, sometimes we see too much focus on technology and less on, uh, on the problem that we are trying to solve. Uh, many, uh, public, uh, public sector organizations, governments have jumped on creating innovation labs, uh, hubs, accelerators at different level, uh, levels of government. Uh, which is, uh, which is a good opportunity for us to, uh, harness this, uh, um, uh, space, uh, where, uh, we can, uh, uh, go, um, uh, against the traditional way of doing business, traditional way of engaging with public sector and private sector startups, and try to look differently at, uh, at the, at the problems that our customers, uh, our citizens, our users have. Uh, so through this, uh, through these innovation labs, uh, governments are organizing different challenges, uh, different hackathons where they can bring not just, uh, big, uh, tech companies and big, uh, more experienced companies to, to the, um, uh. To uh to this uh problem solving opportunity, but also startups and young entrepreneurs, uh, young people who have ideas. So the challenge, uh, what we see is, OK, how do we take these innovative ideas. Innovative solutions and how do we refresh, uh, rethink some of our existing processes in government, including procurement processes, procurement frameworks. How do we use this fresh pool of knowledge to rethink the way we treat risk, rethink the way we treat value for money. So if we are. Better if we are able to better infuse this innovation in our bureaucratic processes, legal frameworks, I think more space will be created for for more startups, for more small and medium enterprises to come into the government, not just with the technology kind of corridor, but in other sectors as well. And I want to say that by default probably moving forward and uh following what's going on right now, probably every sector in our public service delivery is going to consume technology. So uh if we are able to uh learn from this uh digital transformation, digital angle, and uh bring best practices to other sectors, I think, uh, uh, we might get the results sooner. Great. Thank you so much. I, I have a number of follow-ups, but I'll wait, uh, about some of your comments, but that's great. Um, so, um, I, I, I, and Tiffany, would you like to go next? Um, and hopefully, everyone's audio and video is working. Uh, uh, Tiffany Hickson from GSA from USGSA. Hi everyone, uh, hopefully you can hear me. Can you hear me all right? Yes we can. OK, great, great. So just to take a minute to uh introduce myself and really um the role right that I play at the US General Services Administration, um, uh, first I'll start with our agency. Um, our agency actually manages, um, federal properties, uh, so federal buildings, um, uh, along with federal technology projects in terms of using technology. To improve how agencies work, uh, and that ranges from managing central databases to managing cloud computing and cloud databases to managing standards for how, um, government agencies are using technology and that kind of thing. Uh, our agency also manages federal-wide, um, policies, uh, related to how the government buys, um, from the private sector, and of note in the organization that I work in, um, we manage government-wide contracts, and so most of, um, the organizations that are either my peers, so we work for the Federal Acquisition Service. Um, and there are, uh, we are broken down by category of spend. So there's an information technology category. Uh, my category is professional services and human capital services contracts. Um, each one of us are focused on managing, um, uh, a suite of contracts that support all federal agencies in the US government. Um, so for example, in my organization, I manage. Around 5000 contracts that provide knowledge-based services to the federal. My, uh, organization also manages the US government's travel fleet and purchase card program, um, and again this is for use for all of government, um, and so in my role and in my, in, in terms of how my agent. right, uh, approaches tackling procurement problems, we really are looking at, um, the systemic challenges, right, that there are for government across all agencies, whether that be the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, that kind of thing. Um, and so when we're looking at how to solve those problems, um, we are really looking at big, big challenges, you know, clearly the US federal government, um, is a, has a huge procurement budget, and the complexity, uh, in that environment cannot be, um, understated at all. Um, and in terms of one thing that we are working with the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, which is a policy arm. Uh, that my agency works with, uh, what we are looking at from in, in terms of how to address really this complexity is implementing some private sector practices that are used by major corporations, um, which are called category management, and originally some of these practices in terms of how agencies are managing their supplier base. Um, actually started, I believe, in the, in the grocery industry in terms of how grocery stores were buying products, um, from suppliers and how to buy from those suppliers smartly, to have common terms and conditions, to having more pricing transparency over the last couple of years. Um, we have been working on how to take those private sector practices that major companies, not only that do grocery store, um, products and that kind of thing, but also companies like IBM, Johnson and Johnson, Amazon, uh, they all have a very structured approach in terms of how they address, um, buying, um, from their supplier base, what those terms and conditions are, that kind of. So we have been working with the Office of Federal Procurement Policy to implement what we are now calling for the US government, implementing federal category management practices, and the goal of really this innovation or this transformation work that we are doing is really to drive complexity out of, um, how the federal government buys. Um, there are huge challenges, right, for small and medium sized enterprises engaging with the federal government. Um, almost all agencies have their own regulations, their own rules, their own buying practices, their own reporting. Uh, most, much of that actually is not automated, um, it's still done by hand. Um, and so, um, myself, um, and my counterparts are all working on trying to get the federal government, right, to start to use common contracts, um, that are actually managed by, um, the General Services Administration that have common terms and conditions, common practices, transparency in terms of price. Um, automating reporting requirements, yeah, that type of thing, it's a, a huge, huge initiative, one that I think benefit us in a long. Tiffany, sorry, let me, uh, just, uh Yeah, I'll just mention, uh, could, could everyone, uh, mute their mics, please, um, uh, so we, everyone can hear, uh, the speakers. Thank you. Go ahead. OK, no, I, I, I was saying I probably talked more than a minute because that's, you know, generally how I run things, but really I think category management, um, is really going to drive, um, tremendous value for not only reducing the costs, right, administrative burden that the government is paying because we have so much complexity, but also it will reduce barriers for small and medium sized enterprises in participating in the US federal government procurement space. Great, great, and definitely standardization across agencies is a big uh uh uh way to address some of the issues. Uh, great. And then, um, I'm not sure if Brian's on, Vina, are you still on, uh, Vina Sharma? Uh. Yes, yes, hi, Raj. Can you hear me? Hi, yes, we can. So thank, thanks, Raj for moderating this, this very, you know, very, very interesting and important uh discussion. Now, uh, uh, you know, I'll, I'll not introduce myself very much. I'm the global director for, uh, for procurement at the World Bank. Uh, but, but on the second question that you mentioned about what is happening to, to make, uh, small and medium enterprises access, uh, procurement contracts more today. Now, of the 11 trillion contracts that are of the 11 trillion of spend that is done annually, globally, The largest share actually does go to the small and medium enterprises by number. By volume, that the, the amount is not all that much. I mean, there are various estimates, but we do talk about 40 to 50% of the total volume actually going to, uh, to small and medium enterprises. Some of the countries have started, you know, because of the economic, because of the socio-economic benefits that the countries get by small and medium enterprises in those countries getting contracts. So some of the countries have actually started. Requesting for, uh, uh, I mean, they have, have started putting in as a part of their legislative framework, a requirement to have at least 20% or 25% of the total volume of contracts going to small and medium enterprises. Uh, the, the economic dimension or the economic justification of this is not very clear, but, but it does, it does create, uh, the possibilities of smaller companies getting contracts. But I think that the biggest change that has happened in the last few years has actually been the use of technology. Now, earlier, you know, when we did talk about the access and open access to public procurement opportunities, The fact is that public used to be a club. I mean, there was a study that we had done a few years ago when we had found that only 14%, 1 out of 7 contractors, That were getting contracts in a year were those contractors that had not got a contract in the last 5 years. So otherwise, in, uh, you know, 85% of the contractors or the, the successful uh bidders were those that had been in the system for a very long time. Now, uh, the, uh, the reason is not very difficult, as you yourself mentioned, Raj, the, uh, the, the policies are complex, the processes, the system, the transactions and all that are quite, quite difficult, and this affects the, the, the smallest companies more than it affects the, uh, you know, the established companies. And through the use of e-procurement, the access has gone up because it's become easier. People are able to to connect more easily. We have seen in many cases, I mean, I, I remember at the in Bangladesh, for example, the number of bidders has gone up significantly, and with the number of bidders going up, it has, and most of the bidders, most of the new bidders that have gone up. are from the small and medium enterprises. The, the number of bidders has gone up by about 6, you know, we are not very sure whether it is going to be sustained because after some time there is going to be a reduction when, when bidders find that they're not able to get consistently contracts, but, but yet it has meant what it has meant is that access has improved. So I, I do believe that, uh, that a good, uh, open, accessible, uh, system is that is probably. The best bet that you can get for, for attracting more, um more SMEs. Thank you. Great, thank you, Rene. No, I totally agree, and, and, and we definitely see again, and some of those trends, and I guess the, the, we'll discuss soon, you know, how do we accelerate them. Uh, I'm not sure if Brian was able to join. Uh, Roj, can you, can you hear me? There you are. Yes, that's great. Amazing. I've got the system working. Thank you. Great. Uh, welcome, Brian. Uh, I don't know if you heard the question that I had asked. I did. I'll just, I, I'll be very brief as, um, I know, um. Uh, we're running out of time a little bit, but, um, I'll just, um, I'll try to keep to my minutes. Uh, basically, it's a little bit of introduction, I have worked, uh, uh, as was mentioned in the introduction with the World Bank as, uh, Chief of Corporate procurement. I've, uh, worked in the procurement capacity with the UN Asian Development Bank, um, and African Development Bank. Um, I've also been in the private sector, I was with Shell and with, um, uh, Chevron. Um, and KPMG, all of which were in supply chain and procurement capacities. Um, and, um, I must, uh, uh, uh, I must say that one of the biggest challenges that I found was when I had responsibility for both procurement and a, um, as a, a supplier, not a supplier, but as a service company. So, the challenge there was that I saw what procurement's like to work with from the outside. Um, that was a big revelation to me, having many years inside of procurement. Um, and, uh, also in KPMG I was also basically an SME, uh, trying to get work with the UN and World Bank, and with the Asian Development Bank. So, I have personal experience, uh, with some of that. I would say just moving quickly on to changes taking place. I think as the other panel members were saying, technology, um, certainly with my experience in KPMG I worked with government sector and private sector simultaneously. And found that um many of the organizations are working on procure to pay systems, but they were not talking to each other. Um, so you had visibility software, you had e-tendering software, you had e-procurement software, and you had payment, all of which Um, as now the very recently, um, some of the major companies are bringing all these components together, which is making a real, really true, big difference. Um, the other point that is very closely related to that is that supplier relationship management was a huge, uh, deal because of a number of, uh, um, uh, treatment of suppliers which had alienated them due to cost saving, um, when the economy is bad. Um, it creates a very, uh, damaging the relationship with suppliers. So this, um, an organization that has adopted supplier relationship management, supplier management as a philosophy. It's also an offshoot really of category management, um, um, or that can be debated, but it's certainly a very worthwhile area to go to. Um, and I would say as well, the private sector, um, practices, um, are increasingly being adopted. Um, which is also, um, improving things a great deal. So in summary, really, we're talking about the combination of using technology and supplier relationship management as, um, together and making massive changes. Because as, uh, when I was bidding, my biggest experience was that first of all, um, the visibility is not great. Um, um, as, as another panel member said, each organization has disparate and different uh ways of publishing their Um, their, their opportunities. The UNGM is one, World Bank is another, um, that's one thing. Secondly, I would say that, um, uh, the feedback loop, um, is very poor. It's very, very difficult to know what's going on, where your bids are, um, and so basically all the facets of in supplier relationship management combined with the systems, um, I think is the big opportunity for small players to have the visibility and the opportunity. Um, I have many other points to mention, but I will just keep that to, to there. That's great. Thank you. No, there are, there are a number of things here. I think so far what I've captured is, you know, the, the, uh, definitely the role of technology and some of the, some of the new approaches, innovation labs, innovation hubs, um, categorization, uh, category management and, and, and, and creating more standardization. Um, and, and, uh, you also mentioned, uh, just now, Ryan, uh, supplier relationship management. Uh, so maybe we can just, just talk about one of the, uh, so given time here, 4:30, so we've only got about 20 minutes. So I think rather than talk about barriers, um, I'd like to just probe a little bit more on solutions because I think we all know a lot of the barriers, right? Um, so, uh, maybe we can start with, um, just the, uh, the, the issue of standardization and reducing complexity. I think a number of people have mentioned that, right? And, and so that's one of the things that every study we've done and data we've looked at, right? Uh, the, the, the policies are well intended. Regulations are well intended, but they've created a really burdensome environment, uh, where there's a cost of complexity, let's say, right, as, uh, consultants would say. And, and so, I'm just curious if you all have seen. You know, what are the best examples out there, uh, whether it's a government or an agency of reducing complexity of process? Are there any specific examples we could cite here, uh, of how we can reduce complexity standardization. Mhm. Uh, I think Stella, I'm not, I think you're on here as well. Uh, anyone, uh, wanna chime in? Or if it's easier I can uh just, yes, go ahead. Uh, may I know how it is going to curb the corruption in the public sector? OK, we'll come back to that question. I think the question is about corruption, and, and if, if we could just hold the questions, uh, and just for a couple more minutes, uh, until we kind of cover a couple of these things, but we can come back to that. Uh, in my personal perspective, if we go down the path of talking about corruption right now, I think we'll have a different conversation. So, uh, uh, uh, there is something I was just, I would just go, uh, looking for the, uh, data regarding India. And there are many things which has not been mentioned there. OK, well, uh, that's, we can come back to that topic of data. So I think that's, uh, so, uh, we'll, how about we capture that and if you can just put your information on the chat, and we'll come back to that. Um, and, uh, uh, because I think, I think that we're kind of not talking about the database right now. Um, so unless somebody wants to chat chime in, but why don't we go to Uh, Stella, would you like to talk about kind of, you know, how technology or, you know, what you're seeing, uh, in terms of like reducing complexity and creating standardization as a way, way to lower burdens? Uh, again, I will talk more about from my experience, uh, where in, um, in the government where we tried to, uh, implement, uh, uh, government as a platform approach, coming back to what Brian was saying, a lot of, uh, uh, investment, uh, in, uh, digitizing public service delivery, but uh these efforts are run in many governments in isolation and you end up paying more and, uh, having less value. Uh, so we, we try to address some of the standardization, uh, uh, challenges. By talking more to the private sector, um, small and big tech companies, uh, in some countries are organized in different associations. They run their own working groups, uh, try to, um, uh, advocate for, for some new policies and standards with the government based on, uh, based on international best practices. Uh, so having regular discussions with, uh, with the pri, uh, small and medium enterprises, tech companies through their, uh, sectoral association works. First of all, because it creates ongoing channel of communication and, uh, you don't need to wait for a problem to come up. You can, you know, jointly shape some of these new standards. Secondly, I would say, um, uh, also, um, uh, what we, what we see, uh, a lot of uh education needs to take place. Again, uh, supporting what Brian was just saying, um, this digital disruption that is hitting every sector requires from us uh to have not just sectorial expertise in procurement, but also to know what exactly we are procuring. And in the, uh, in the, on the technology in the technology space, you cannot apply the, the rules and the frameworks that you applied for 20th century technologies to the 21st century technologies, which a lot, uh, many of them are using open source. Uh, you build, uh, with open source technology, which should. Require from us also to um have uh different frameworks on how we buy, how we operate, how we sustain, so we need to educate ourselves um and for that it's very important to have this communication going on between the procurement and the and the small and medium enterprises. It's great, and I, I think, um, can I get something good, right? Right. Hello. Hello. Right, can I just add something very quickly? It's just basically, uh, again, um, a combination of, uh, systems and uh techniques because one thing that, uh, when I was at Chevron in the oil and gas industry, they chose surprisingly, uh, you know, geographically, they have very, very broad scope, and they have actually very similar standards. So, um, there are a lot of similarities between major organizations in terms of the number of suppliers that they have to deal with. Um, so, one of the, uh, um, things that they did very well was that they, uh, used, uh, a risk segmentation approach, um, so that, uh, when, uh, you know, organizations can, uh, register, what happens to these huge databases very often is there's a lot of dormancy. Um, and a lot of, uh, as an SME, um, you'll feel that you, you registered, but then nothing happens. Um, and, um, therefore, I think there's no one thing that is invaluable is to have a dedicated supplier relationship management or supplier relationship, uh, group or staff that manages this database to keep it current, communicates, keep fora going, and make sure that the SME knows that once they, they've actually registered, they are able to see, um, what is coming up, but also what categories they have, um, registered under. And so there's multiple categories, uh, which makes, uh, with the uh World Bank, of course, we have so many suppliers, so many categories, so many different routes. Once that's categorized, then you can start to piecemeal. And the second dimension is also to regionalize and to, uh, divide up in another dimension which is into region and country. So that you can regionalize and country and sector, um, your, uh, database so that you can actively pursue, update, make sure opportunities are followed up, and also feedback is sent. I think this is the huge leap forward that the private sector has made. And with the technology, uh, I work, well, Ariba is one of the SAP one. there's many others such as Cooper, uh, Zaos, and many other smaller ones. Um, they allow, what they've done is thresholded. There's another dimension is, of course, the size of the projects. So the small um procurement um is nowadays, um, either it's done on a framework basis, or it's done on an eBay type model now, which is coming more and more. So what is happening now is that the organizations are looking far more at the strategic value of high risk type procurement and medium value, um, and the low end, the long tail. is actually becoming much more automated. That's a huge leap forward that I found when I was at KPMG. Uh, organizations are getting away from, uh, the organization has its own threshold of where the tail, um, is, uh, um, secondary. But certainly the technology is, is taken some massive leaps forward in the last, uh, even the last 3 years. Um, so, just in answer to the question of simplification, the technology, but also it's essential in, in my personal view to support to staff a supplier relationship, uh, uh, management unit. Thank you. Great, great. Thank you. Anyone else? Can I come in? Of course. So, so first of all, you know, I, I think the, the, the quality of discussions is excellent. And what I'm also happy is that, that, that I'm also looking at the chat and there are a lot of questions being asked, but there are a lot of answers also being given. So, so I think the, the net question that will be available to the, to the panel will not be all that much. Now, having said that, you know, I, I must, I would like to take uh uh forward what, what Brian was saying. Uh, you know, there was a study that was done by Cambridge a few years ago, and they found that the use of technology is actually going to reduce jobs, but it's going to increase productivity. Now, uh, what it means is, you know, you have, uh, you know, you have a wide spectrum of, uh, in terms of productivity, you have Chile, for example, where the cost of procurement to the value of procurement is about 20 cents. So, so 20 cents being spent. procure $100 and then you have some countries in Africa where it is more than $10. So the, there is a huge uh gap between, you know, the countries that are very productive in terms of uh placing contracts and the other countries that opportunities exist in, in, in increasing productivity. The second thing is, uh, you know, there is a general sense that over the years, the, the, the type of procurement would be broadly 3. you would have, as Brian was mentioning, you'd have Uh, procurement that are relatively small value, that, that are input-based, where the specifications are very clear, where the, uh, the, the, the, the, uh, the evaluation criteria and all that is very clear, and their automation, of course, uh, would, would be the, the primary role. I mean, there would not be, there, there is very little value addition as far as the human mind is concerned. The second is, uh, the marketplace where you have multiple solutions, multiple suppliers, multiple purchases, and so on, the Amazon kind of thing. Where, uh, the, it is, it is more about bringing the suppliers and the buyers together and ultimately being able to take a decision based on broad principles. So these are the, the, these two are, uh, you know, process-based, transaction-based, where the systems and all that are going to be important. The third one is where, you know, as I think Stella was mentioning procurement of, uh, of technology, for example. I mean, It will be very difficult to, to, to do procurement of technology using very clear mechanistic kind of rules, uh, procurement of output-based contracts, procurement of outcome-based contracts, they're the kind of content that we are going to see more and more. There, uh, it would not be so, they are not going to be driven so much by, by mechanical rules, but by principles, by value for money, by contextual, uh, uh, analysis, by, by the, by, by shaping the markets themselves. And therefore what we are going to, what I think we would be seeing uh is I, uh, is, uh, systems that are working simultaneously, but they are working using the same principles, principles, but different, different processes. And, uh, I think this is something that we've already started seeing and we are going to be seeing more and more, uh, as, as, as we progress in time. Thank you. Great. Now, there are a number of points in here, and I think a lot of them are pointing towards technology and kind of standardization. So I think, uh, Tiffany, uh, if you could take this question as well, um, Tiffany, that my role in category management, uh, from a category management, I think that's one of the goals of category management, right? Standardization. Do you have any example from GSA? I do, I do, and, uh, in terms of things that we are under, we have some very large undertakings that we are moving forward on and have started really over the last 18 months to really start to implement, um, some of the core principles of category management to reduce complexity, um, for, for companies that are participating in the, the federal procurement space and of note, um. At the moment we are in the process of standardizing about 16,000 contracts, uh, terms and conditions, and it runs across categories of spend, um, so we've got a common framework, um, for what the administrative requirements are, what the, um, experience requirements are if you're gonna participate, uh, in this space. Um, of, of note, um, it's actually called our multiple awards, and it's a common set of contracts that are used across government, and about a little over 70% of those 16,000, uh, contracts are managed by, uh, SMEs, um, and so really getting, um, across all the categories of spend that we have, having that common set of terms and conditions. Um, for us to be able to use technology to reduce the cost of, uh, companies participating in federal procurement through our contracts. Um, without that standardization, we really have not been able to use technology, right, as a driver for us, uh, to improve contract administration. So really echoing right what the other panelists have been talking about is first you got to get standardized, right? So technology can come in, um, as a, a, a driver, right, of more innovation and more change and as well as to reduce our costs. So, um, clearly. Updating that many contracts is gonna take a little bit of time but we are moving out very, very aggressively in terms of trying to have, um, all of those changes made. 12 to 18 months. And at the same time we are working to implement an underlying system. Um, which we actually have not had before. Much of our processes were manual, manual reporting from companies, uh, in terms of their performance, um, under those contracts, and so we are implementing an underlying system to start to automate much of, um, how companies participate, how they report, um, how they're solicited, how they find out information about procurement opportunities, so we're really, you know, working, um, on both of those things at the same time. Um, I think another panelist, uh, had mentioned, um, that in, in terms of access right to information about procurement opportunities, uh, the US federal government has had a common website, um, where, um, procurement opportunities are posted, um, but it hasn't. really kept up with um modern technology, right, and what people expect in terms of the level of transparency and information that are in those websites, um, and so the federal government has is also working to improve how it is um. Providing access right to companies to understand what it is that we're buying, who's buying it, uh, how do, uh, SMEs connect with those buyers, um, as well as the program folks that are in charge of the requirements, um, you know, those are, I think, in one of the questions you had sent us earlier was really about, you know, barriers, and this work is really trying to address some of those key barriers, um, if you are a smaller or medium enterprise. The biggest challenge, right, in terms of engaging in the US federal procurement space is where do you engage, um, and where's the right place for you to enter the market based on the services or products that you're selling. And so GSA is working, um, to try to bring a lot more transparency across government so companies know, right? Hey, the Department of Homeland Security is the place that really is buying the things that I'm. Selling and here is the actual contracting officer as well. It's a program um that needs these requirements so I can with a name and a telephone number right so I can go reach out to them and and talk to them about what it is that I have to offer the federal government so we, we really, um, are, are working on that as kind of a a secondary and larger, you know, step for federal government in terms of providing that transparency but. You know the the big work that we're doing around clearing out the complexity, um, is, is, is huge and a really important precursor if we're gonna get to a place where we can use technology right to really drive down costs in terms of, you know, participating in the market. Great, great. No, it's great to see, I think, some really good examples, and again, I'm kind of tracking for things right now, technology and kind of innovation, uh some of the new innovative practices, category management, supplier relationship management, both of them kind of point towards standardization and better communication. I keep hearing that over and over, right? Um, communication both ways, understanding of markets. So given time here, let me just ask the final question. Um, Which is really, um, you know, we've got a lot of, uh, great people on, uh, and late at night, and so they obviously really care about this topic, right? Um, so what advice do you have? So, you know, if we can limit it to, you know, there's one thing, 11 action, I know that's not easy to do, um, but, uh, where do people get started, I guess, what, or, or what one thing out there can they do? To start to build some confidence that, you know, things can improve, and, and, and participation can improve, and we can lower costs. So, um, where do we start? And Tiffany, you wanna start and, and, and then we'll go, uh, to everyone. Raj, uh, uh, hello. Hello. Hello, yes. Hello. Rene, is that you? No, no, this, this is not me. This is not me. Raj, uh, uh, Raj, I have a question that if, uh, India has a, uh, platform such like that, uh, GEM, government e-marketplace, how does, it is going to correlate with that? I think, I think maybe, you know, I think that might be a question for Justin and, and Hunt. How about this? Uh, can we just go through this last question really quick and then uh we'll do uh questions, maybe start with the question that was just asked and Justin or Hunt can answer. Uh, why don't we just like keep like really short one-minute answers, and, and then, uh, let's take some questions, uh, and we'll answer that question that just came up. Uh, so any advice? What's the advice out there, uh, for everyone? Who wants to start Tiffany, I'll just call him so we can make it quick. Sure, I think the advice, uh, the question you had about advice was teed up to like if I was gonna sell government if one thing to do, right, um, and I, I really believe this, which is if you've got a common framework standard care that you're using today, you know, use them, um, stop at I think complexion right and buy environment because you are really prohibiting, I think, innovative suppliers, uh, and companies who would otherwise. But not to participate in your market, um, from entering because it's just too costly, it's too complex, it's just too hard, right, um, and so I spent a lot of time talking to, uh, federal, uh within executives, um, about, you know, we need to work with one voice to reduce that complexity, um, so companies can participate and, you know, we get, uh, better products and services as a result. So I spend a lot of time talking about that right now. The standardization through a common framework, right, um, that's right. Don't go out and do your own stuff. You don't need to. We already have, like, you know, a common framework for it, so. I got a lot right now. Right, um, Brian, you wanna go next? Uh, can you hear me? Yeah, sorry. Yeah, I mean, um, again, uh, uh, at the risk of slightly repeating myself again, it's, um, um, really, it comes back to examples that I, uh, have seen in the oil and gas industry with Chevron and Shell, which does, uh, it gets a grip of its, uh, supplier database, it's registration process, and it's pre-qual process. And in both cases, they actually have a system where certainly above, um, the low value threshold, every single supplier is given a grade. And, uh, issues such as health, safety, environment, corporate social responsibility, uh, diversity, um, are all issues of standards that each of them have to qualify against. Again, it's a very quick and lean system. So they're segmented, um, into, um, their sector and also down to country because obviously from a, a country in a developing country, it's quite difficult for them to, to compete again and sometimes into America's and sometimes it's not, not a great deal of point. So, um, the, the, the, the division and the segmentation within the database, and the setup of a, uh, the staffing involved to be dedicated towards that is a huge effort. It, it requires, uh, a very, very considerate amount of effort, um, and that does need some staff. Um, so those are certainly the issues. It's a combination of, of attention to the, the methodologies around supplier relationship management, staffing, and the systems. To be quite honest with you, the system, it can be done in Excel if you need, but the beauty of the modern systems, of course, is that they're accessible globally and the cloud has made a huge change in that respect. So, yeah, it's a, a relatively a straightforward answer, um, trying to keep it simple, um, but also, uh, powerful with powerful reach. That's great. That's very specific answers so far. So thank you, um, um, Ms. Stella. Uh, the point I'd like to make is, um, the World Bank is helping, uh, developing countries and emerging markets to bring more innovation in this space. Uh, and in these countries, I think, uh, we don't have so much complexity as we have in developed economies. Uh, so many of our, we are, uh, just in the process of creating these frameworks. Uh, which gives us an opportunity to really, uh, innovate, uh, and, uh, look outside of the box. So my, my advice would be let's change the optics a little bit, um, paraphrasing, uh, Tom Friedman, uh, we will be living in an after corona world, which will require from us a little bit of more innovation and unconventional thinking. Also keep in mind that public sector is not just about central government, it's also about local governments, and in many of our client countries, uh, we can look at the risk and at the value for money through and create different engagements, uh, different frameworks, which will allow, especially. Local startups and SMEs to deliver services at the local level, local government, build that reputation and prove their capability so that they have more arguments and track record to enter the central government public sector procurement. Thank you. Right now there's, uh, I, I think, uh, it's local and state governments, I think, make up our provinces or whatever they may be called, and make up a lot of the spending outside of central, so that's true. And then, uh, uh, Rene, any, any last points? I think we have a couple, we have a few questions that, you know, we can go through, uh, depending on time and people if they want to stick around. Um, all right, thank, thanks, Raj, and I agree with everyone. I agree with Brian. And, uh, Stella just in everyone, uh, uh, you know, I think the specific points that were mentioned by Stella about, uh, you know, the, the spend by the others, uh, in most countries, the, the public spend, the public procurement spend is actually more than the taxes collected. So, so obviously it is being financed by, by sources other than taxes and, and, in many cases, it's because the public sector undertakings of the state-owned enterprises do a very large portion of procurement. So when we talk about uh public procurement, we are really not only talking about the space which is directly governed by the, uh, directly governed by the, that state, but also those those enterprises that are controlled by the state. Now, having said that, uh, I think as we are moving towards the e-government, with more and more activities being done, um, through the system, through, through the internet. The, the availability and accessibility of data is increasing for decision makers. And therefore, things that have been mentioned or issues that have been mentioned by Brian and the others about, uh, about the capacities, about the performance and all that would actually be now available to the, uh, to, to, to those people who are going to be taking decisions in terms of, for example, uh, beneficial ownership, for example, who is owning this particular company. And this is going to have a very significant impact on anti-corruption efforts by the, by the countries, you know, by, uh, uh, uh, identifying suppliers that are performing well and identifying those that are not performing well and so on, so, and that is probably going to be a very important factor in making decisions subsequently. Thank you. Right. Well, transparency definitely helps in that. Uh, let me, let me just go ahead and I think Hunt, and, uh, so I think first of all, thank you, everyone. I think we'll just do a few questions if, uh, you know, those people that want to stick around. There are a few questions. So, um, mm, that I've gotten over here that, uh, Sandra sent and passed over, so we can go through a couple of The, um, but I think Justin and, uh, Hunt, there was a question, I believe, about, you know, if, if a country has their own e-procurement system or data, right? How do you tap into that if I understood the question correctly? Uh, are you in some ways like linking to systems through APIs or any other? Is there any, any, any goal to do that? Um, I'll let the, uh, hi, this is Hunt. I'll let the gentleman, uh, uh, by, uh, Pen Pende, uh, ask the question again real quick. Please. Um, hello? Yes, please, uh, ask your question. Yep, you're avail. OK, so I, uh, from what, yeah, you're welcome to ask your question. Yes. Uh, actually, I had asked that, uh, that time that there is a system in India known as government e-marketplace, GEM. Which uh work like similar like this and they had uh for uh a provision for the SMEs also, uh, MSME here. So And medium enterprises. Uh, Uh, so how this is going to, uh, uh, uh, uh, synchronize with that or correlate with that? How it is going to? And there is a still a problem in that, uh, government e-marketplace system because there are many suppliers who are not still on board, and, uh, the, uh, procurement professionals gets, uh, uh, uh, uh, complexity about that. Can I, can I take this hunt? Can I take this, please? Yes, please. OK, Mr. Pany, uh, OK, so this is, you know, when you talk about GEM, the, the, the government electronic marketplace, uh, you know, I think what was mentioned at the beginning of this, uh, this talk that this GPPD is simply a database. It doesn't get, it doesn't really get involved in the transactions in the, the actual purchasing, uh, by the governments and all that. It brings to the, uh, it brings to this platform. The practices that are being, uh, that, that are being followed by a particular country or by, by a particular sector within the country and so on. So, whatever you have mentioned is, is actually valid, but that is going to be a part of the database that is, that will be, you know, it will be an information that will be a part of the database of GPPD. But, uh, the GPPD itself will not be talking to the, to the, um, the government electronic marketplace. Is that right, uh, Hunt? Uh, so yes, that is correct. I mean, one thing you can do with the GPPD is you can look for any country in the world that does have an e-marketplace under e-procurement functionalities, we have all the, the EGP marketplace. Now, regarding his question, taking it to the panel discussion, I thought that was pretty interesting in that, you know, one way for MSMEs and SMEs and, you know, startups to participate in Um, in government procurement is to register in the e-marketplace because the e-marketplace is really where a lot of their, uh, their goods and services could be brought up. I recall in, um, In Romania, Romania put together a great e-marketplace where anything under $25,000 you know, could be easily purchased by any of the contract authorities within the. Within the government, so it certainly seems quite amenable to be, you know, a mechanism for one, allowing small to mid-size SMEs and startups to participate, and, and also marketplaces can also cut down on transaction costs associated with procurement transactions. So I thought that was a great question. Thank you. Raj, I'll, I'll send it back to you. Great, great. Well, thank you. Uh, and I'm pulling up another question here from, uh, from someone. Uh, I don't, I, I think it's from, uh, Jelly Molina, if I'm saying that, uh, uh, correctly. Um, the question is, do you think that there should be standard criteria for categorizing SMEs? And the example we used is Uh, that, um, a company with 500 employees and with $7 million annual gross in the US is a small business, which I, I, I do believe it's true. And, but in, in the Philippines, for example, it's considered a large country, uh, a large company. So should there be standards? Anyone have any uh opinion on that or, or, or know how that may be handled? Sorry, can I, uh, just jump in briefly? It, it was the point, uh, I, I, I mentioned a little bit earlier, as well as that, um, certainly with the challenges within all the countries, there's sometimes the demand or the desire to have local businesses winning business can can run contrary to the uh standardization. Um, because obviously, um, when you are just come out of Africa where I was just working, um, and then sometimes you have the challenge where you'll have, uh, International organizations bidding for work which uh local companies can also uh apply for and generally they don't, they don't quite come up as well when it comes to the, the evaluation grades, but you still want to invoke um methods to try to encourage local business. Those are some challenges. Certainly, that, that's one thing. I think in terms of categorization, pre-qualification, uh, registration, all these factors, uh, obviously need to be taken into place. And I think when you look at the regional, um, uh, array of suppliers, there needs to be, um, obviously some consideration of the fact that there are different sizes of organizations. This is a very difficult thing to build in. But of course, the, this is why I was, um, going on about the, the need for staff, uh, and the need to address the database system. Because it does require incredible amounts of work. One, to keep the dormant ones going. 21 thing that the private sector does very well is that once an organization registers, it is, um, and if it has missed or failed to win a bid. Um, the organizations, uh, talk to them and encourage them and show them on ways to improve. They improve against the criteria, um, the general criteria that, um, are involved in the qualification and registration process, and they're very active. And so that's one way to do it. Again, there are a lot of contradictions, of course, um, and quite rightly, um, in a country like the Philippines or, um, in some of the other countries, what is regarded as a large country, there would be regarded as a very small uh organization. But having said that, um, um, and, uh, the, the, the, the main thing is, of course, um, many of those organizations may or may not be, um, Uh, trying to bid against, uh, um, certain pieces of work against each other. So, anyway, um, I think it's very important that these things are taken into consideration. The answer is yes, of course. Um, uh, and all of these facts, size, um, skills, and everything else can be, uh, logged and worked on. Uh, that, that's why, um, I do believe that the, the requirements on supplier relationship management do require, uh, a unit to, to manage these things quite carefully. Right. Um, I think maybe, uh, it's 5:07. Um, uh, should we, uh, I know there's one question from our friend Chris Smith. Hi, Chris. Um, I think many of us know Chris. Uh, it's, uh, maybe we make that the final question. Uh, does the GPPD have any data on MSME participation? Um, I, I believe we do. In fact, uh, I believe there's a, uh, indicator in there where we try to identify of the amount of, um, of, uh, tenders, uh, and value, whether or not, um, how much of it is going to SMEs and obviously based on, uh, the previous, uh, question we were asked, uh, is, uh, it's, it's relative, obviously, you know, because in the Philippines, an SME is, is one thing, but in America, it's another thing. Um. So, uh, uh, Chris also asked an interesting question about, uh, he's wondering how much reliable data is actually available on SME participation in tenders and contract awards, particularly on some SMEs are not visible as subcontractors and many e-procurement systems fail to categorize suppliers registered in their systems. So, That kind of goes along the lines of what Brian was saying is the ability to actually recognize these vendors in the database and then secondly, many times, you know, there are SMEs involved in these tenders, it's just they're involved as subcontractors. Yes. Um, OK. Great. So I think, uh, Han, would you like, I, I'll, I'd like to just say thank you for, to all the panelists and, and great discussion. I know I, when I looked at the time, it's going to be 50 minutes or 40 minutes, I knew that's never enough time, but there's some really great advice in there. Uh, we'll, we'll catalog that and, and, and, and write something up on that so everyone can hopefully start using that. Um, Hunt, would you like to sign out? Sure, I'll sign out. Uh, Raj, thank you so much, uh, for this, uh, for moderating and really, uh, being there and making this, uh, a, uh, joint, um, event between the Public spin forum and Uh, the World Bank, um, and thanks for really rolling out the red carpet for it. It, it was, it was fantastic, uh, and for moderating. I'd like to thank, um, also, uh, the panelists, uh, Venne, uh, Tiffany, Stella, and Brian. Thanks so much, uh, for, uh, participating and for your very useful, uh, and thoughtful, uh, discussions. Also, thanks, uh, Justin for, uh, helping out, uh, with the project and, um. And, and with, uh, uh, the presentation. So, um, I'm happy that the event uh went smoothly. We were uh quite concerned at the beginning, but, uh, it's, uh, it's been a smooth sailing. Uh, so thanks everybody. I'll go ahead and, uh, sign off and, uh, have a great evening and please everybody stay as safe as possible, OK? Um, we will be sending out the presentations and, uh, the video link in about a day or two when it, when it's available. Thanks again.

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On March 18th, 2020, the World Bank launched the Global Public Procurement Database (GPPD) – the world’s first database dedicated to the collection of country-specific public procurement information from 218 countries and territories. The GPPD is a World Bank initiative with the objective of meeting the increasing demand, from both the public and the private sectors, for a comprehensive global knowledge product that captures data about country procurement systems and country eProcurement implementations at a global level. For more details visit: http://bit.ly/WBG_GPPD

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