ROBUST CONTRACT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM IN PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS STILL NEEDED

Let me give all thanks to the Authority (PPRA) and other stakeholders who made into tangible new Act and its regulations to govern the public sector procurement in Tanzania. At least I have gone through different provisions in the released laws to see the major changes and how to implement it in my daily duties.

When the new PPA 2011 and its regulations of 2013 were released, the first thing to go through to see whether there are major changes and if that changes have added value to the new provisions were on the issue of contract management. What was the driven reason/s to go through in first instances to that sections/regulations?, It is the facts that through PPRA Auditing always they reporting on poor contract management and administration and where I thought that the same effort could be made during the changes of act to bring the new act could be put forth to the issue of contract management and administration to where a lot of tax payer money has been lost.

Unfortunately enough to my opinion, both Act and Regulations did not detailed in the issue of contract management system in all public institutions. Where do I am expecting to see it?, may be in the upcoming guidelines and circulars from the Authority.

Actually we need to see now the comprehensive, integrative and interactive systems whether being it in manual system or web based system but it should be well structured system for contract management in order for easy and smooth contract implementation and easily tracking and monitoring of all public contracts been entered between PE's in one hand and Contractors, Service Providers and Suppliers in other hand. We need to see the well documented systems categorizing all important activities in contract management and which bring effective contract management such as Service Delivery Management (SDM) which identify and put forth what to be management (deliverable), the tools to measure the performance such as service level agreement been implemented efficiently). Relationship Management phase also must been seen in all contract management phases in order to create and built in the mutual understanding on both parties before and during contract implementation. By having a good relationship with supplier, contract many things may be achieved such as minimizing various risks, and reducing overall costs such as costs for fighting each other when the contract goes wrong. We need the well document process in respect to contract administration phase in the contract management which provides the formal governance and documentation during the contract implementations. Under this phase we need always to see the Contract review report and contract review during the contract implementation.

It is my opinion that if at all these are documented well structured to be used as a benchmark to all implementers of public institutions procurement contracts, I am sure that the measure of contract performance may be easily, identifying the efficiency, total cost of ownership of the project/items that lead to real seeing whether value for money has been achieved.

These are some of my observations and opinion regarding to our newly released public laws and I would suggest to be provided as the guideline so that to ensure that the so called robust contract management system in all public institutions established.
I submit!