Procurement delays, unfair bidding practices, opaqueness in government processes, etc. have become things of the past with the deployment of Government e-Procurement System of NIC (GePNIC) in Manipur. The system provides transparency in the tendering process, reduces time for procurement, offers equal opportunity to all bidders, and encourages maximum participation leading to greater competition. The Manipur State Rural Roads Development Agency (MSRRDA), which procured goods/services through manual tendering process for construction and maintenance of rural roads under Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY), adopted the new system developed at NIC Chennai. GePNIC is an online, efficient, secure, web based system which uses Digital Signature Certificate (DSC) both for authentication of users and encryption of documents. This makes the system full proof from unwanted access and tampering of bid documents. The e-Tender portal hosted at http://pmgsytendersman.gov.in, made the procure-ment process online by facilitating MSRRDA to create & publish the tenders, evaluate the bids and assign the contract to the bidders. The system provides a secure platform to users for online transac-tions for procurement. The registered bidders can access the live tenders through this site and submit their bids online duly encrypted at their end. This portal went live with the publishing of 69 tenders having estimated value of Rs.231.65 crores of MSRRDA thus making Manipur first state in NE to implement this solution. Bidders can access tenders or upload bid documents - 24x7 from the comforts of their office /home. The bids submitted by bidders are digitally signed along with a time stamp at bidder's end thus ensuring authenticity & eradicating false bids. Authentication using DSC 128 bits SSL encryption, Role based Access Control, Audit Logging, and History Tables. Time stamping of bids makes the process fully transparent. With the successful opening of Technical & Financial bids of all the 69 tenders, the process for the awarding contract to the bidders had started. MSRRDA being a Govt. organisation faced many problems and challenges in deploying this online solution system. Among the challenges faced were management related, ensuring data integrity and confidentiality and non-repudiation of information and its authenticity; providing support to various classes of users with different level of computer literacy, issuing DSCs to private bidders etc. With the active participation and interaction with all the stake holders, the project was implemented suc-cessfully. One of the common goals amongst the stakeholders was to create a working environment where the comfort levels of all the users of the system are high. Since the adoption of this online solution system, MSRRDA has been able to fulfil the goals initiated by National Rural Roads Development Agency (NRRDA) - the national agency executing the project. Reduced pro-curement time cycle, increased efficiency, saving from huge advertise-ment cost, reduction in tabulation time, less paper works, etc. were the additional gains from the new system. Building Blocks: Dedicated Blade Server at Laxmi Nagar Data Center of NICSI. Server Collocation and Dedicated SAN by NICSI. Disaster Recovery Integration at Hyderabad. Central e-Procurement Team. Members from NIC, NICSI & Empanelled Agency. DSC facility by NICCA. Dedicated Help Desk. Training at State Level for officers and Bidders. Dedicated NIC Coordinators from each State. Hired manpower for implementing States. Pilot/Rollout. Technology used: Open Source Technology adhering to open standards. Linux Platform. Apache Tomcat Web Server. Postgresql Database. Java Enterprise Environment (JEE) Jasper Reports. BACKGROUND A demo-cum-training server for host-ing this online solution at http://tenders.man.nic.in was set up at NIC, Manipur and Digital Signature Certificates (DSC) were issued to offi-cials who are going use this system for tenders - creation, publishing, evaluation, contract awarding etc., of MSRRDA from NIC Certifying Authority (NICCA). For issuing DCSs to bidders & helping them in addressing any issues relating to DSCs, MANITRON was made Licensed Registration Authority of Sify with the approval of Government of Manipur. Thereafter, NIC, Manipur started imparting training to officials of MSRR-DA & MANITRON on the usage of the new system & DSC. Meeting with MSRRDA were called to discuss the readiness for rolling out e-Tendering Process in Manipur. Then, the directives from NRRDA & NIC (Hq) had made Manipur to join the National roll out of e-procurement using GePNIC. Implementation strategy With the initiatives of NIC, Manipur & DST, Government of Manipur, MANI-TRON was made the LRA of Sify for issuing DSC to private bidders, for tak-ing care of bidders and their related issues. MANITRON officials were also trained by NIC, Manipur as trainer and they in turn trained bidders and addressed day-to-day issues of the bid-ders. A monitoring committee and another core committee for e-Tender-ing were also constituted for the smooth implementation of the project. NIC took the responsibility of issuing eight DSCs to the officials of MSRRDA from NICCA. NICSI through (n)Code provided the support staffs for assisting bidders, officials of MSRRDA & NIC, manned the e-Tendering helpline of Manipur during office hours. A help desk was opened with the aim of attending & addressing any issues of bidders relating to e-Procurement. Besides these, regular meetings were conducted with the officials of MSRR-DA & NIC for discussing & resolving issues like state specific requirements, trainings etc, for overall smooth & suc-cessful implementation. The state spe-cific requirements of MSRRDA like Direct Credit (DC) facility in offline payment option, misc. folder, proof of possession of machinery etc. in My doc-ument space were introduced & incor-porated in the system after consulting the development team at NIC, Chennai. Conclusion The system is likely to revolutionise the government procurement process thereby speedup development and is a major step towards e-governance. The next objective of the e-Procurement team in Manipur is to introduce mod-ules of online payment gateway, auto-matic technical evaluation in the sys-tem for next phase of procurement by MSRRDA.