National e-Government Procurement (e-GP) project is one of the Mission Mode Projects (MMP) under e-Bharat. The World Bank guidelines also emphasize Procurement Reform as one of the key areas of administrative reforms. Specific to Government of Orissa, tender fixing by formation of cartels among bidders and tender related crimes was a burning issue. Keeping in view of the same NIC Orissa initiated the move and Government of Orissa took the leading role to accelerate the implementation of on-line procurement to be applicable across all departments. The pilot implementation started in March 2008 for two identified departments namely Works Department and Water Resources Department in both online and offline mode. The successful pilot implementation inspired Govt. of Orissa to take the resolution to implement total online tendering for four major engineering departments for works packages having tender value of more than Rs. 50 lakhs with effect from 1st July 2008. Subsequently the decision has been taken to host all tenders having tender value more than Rs. 20 lakhs from 1st Nov 2008.

Effective Programme Management Approach - Key behind the success — Constitution of High Level Committee headed by Principal Secretary, Water Resources - The committee consisting of Secretaries of four major engineering departments, Finance Department, Law Department, IT Department, Chief Engineers/Engineer-In-Chiefs of Concerned engineering departments, NIC has been formed to focus on various issues related to Change Management, Procurement Policy, OPWD Code revision etc. Excerpt of the address from Dr. Aurobindo Behera, Principal Secretary to Govt, Water Resource Department, Chairman, High level committee, e-Procurement The e-procurement system has given the reformist face to the Government & empowerment to bidders. Elimination of cartels & bidding related crimes, Reduction in adverse press reports, National level recognition for project and Acclamation for creating social Impact have added to the reformist face of the Government. Bidders have been empowered for Remote submission of bids, Reduced bidding costs, No more dependence on departmental officials. I highly appreciate the effort put in by NIC team for making it a success. — Formulation of e-Procurement Mission team- The e-Procurement Mission team has been formulated by pulling expert engineers from four major engineering departments headed by a Superintending Engineer from Rural Development Department with the objective to support the High Level Committee in Change management, Code Revision, to share domain input with NIC, Coordination with implementing departments etc. — Opening NIC Certifying Authority RA Office at Bhubaneswar - NIC Certifying Authority (NIC-CA), New Delhi, decided to open its Registration Authority office at NIC Bhubaneswar, Orissa for smooth delivery of Digital Signature Certificates to all government officials. So far 1023 DSCs have been issued to the Government Officers. Appreciation note from PK Mohapatra, IAS, Secretary, IT & SIO, Orissa I am proud to be part of the e-procurement team of NIC. NIC Bhubaneswar deserves all congratulations, for setting the R.A office, which will do away, all trouble faced by Govt. of Orissa in getting DSCs. Well done & all my heartiest best wishes to SIO, NIC and all the officials. — Formation of Project Management Unit (PMU)- A PMU has been set up to provide support to e-Procurement Mission Team, extend Help Desk facility, support through Toll Free Phone, extend support in imparting training to bidders and Govt. Officials etc.

Capacity Building through Trainings, Workshops & Self-study CDs - Massive training programmes and workshops have been undertaken at different phases for different levels to build confidence among Government Officers as well as bidders. Hands on Sessions have been conducted at KIIT Deemed University Campus utilizing 100 systems available for practical sessions at a time. District Informatics Officers and District Informatics Associates of NIC District Centers have been trained on the system to provide fast hand support for the project at district level. A training center having 20 nodes with Internet connectivity has been established at “Nirman Soudh”, Bhubaneswar to impart training and support by PMU on continuous basis.

Technology and Security Management Apart from the Live server, three more servers are being used for the project. Training and demonstrations are being conducted using the demo server. Test Server, the staging server is used for testing of new builds by NIC team as well as e-Procurement Mission and PMU team. Back Server is dedicated for regular backup. Security Certification has been obtained from STQC and CyberQ. The load testing has been conducted by STQC, Chennai. The Live server is running on HTTPS mode for which SSL certificate has been obtained from NICCA. All bidder documents are stored in encrypted form in the server using 1024 bit encryption. For details contact sio@ori.nic.in