What is Procurement?

Procurement is a sub-system of the public sector management system. It is a critical factor for governments soliciting international financing and a key public sector function related to good governance. Increased concern in the development community to to increase transparency and fight against corruption as resulted in a renewed focus on procurement services.

A long-neglected field in the theory and practice of economic development, procurement is now receiving the attention and priority it always deserved. In addition to its enhanced importance within international development lending, procurement is being affected by the impact of information technology.

What is the Procurement Challenge?

Those in the international donor community and at the national level responsible for how to improve procurement policies, systems and procedures are faced with a diverse set of constraints: lack of adequate institutional and legal frameworks, insufficient modern technologies, inadequate training facilities and teaching materials and limited budgets. These constraints are present both at the level of national procurement systems and at the level of individual development project procurement.

The Solution

IDF Procurement Services is an effort to provide international donors task managers or program team leaders, as well as national procurement authorities, the required assistance to cope with this challenge. It combines the consulting capabilities of the IDF and Barquin International in public sector reform, procurement and information technologies (particularly data warehousing) and knowledge management into an integrated package capable of meeting contemporary technological demands.

IDF Procurement Services has developed an integrated approach that not only ensures compatibility among procurement elements, but also creates an architecture that links the procurement sub-system to other sub-systems of national public sector management, such as budgeting, accounting and auditing IDF often provides procurement audits as well complementing their efforts at all levels with staff support from The Procurement Institute