How we are helping build capacity in Public Procurement around the World

Synopsis:

Trillions of dollars are spent every year by Governments around the world. Millions of Government staff, right from Central/Federal Government to Village Level Government bodies, procure good, works and services. Most of them have no formal training in Public Procurement, which could result in sub-optimal spending of valuable public money.

One of the World’s leading Multi-Lateral Agencies wanted to build global capacity among Government staff to procure better. Traditional models of capacity building through face-to- face training were too expensive and took too long for any meaningful impact. Deploying MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) was the right solution.

We partnered in the initiative by designing, developing and hosting, a web-based Learning Management System (LMS) and designing, developing and deploying multiple MOOCs. We continue to host the solution, maintain it and update courseware. We also run a learner support center, 16×7.

The Situation:

This challenge of capacity building in public procurement is daunting in physical terms. This is because it involves the training of more than 7 million officers in India alone, who would be involved in some procurement-related activities at some point in various PSUs and government departments. Also, there were no ready certification programs in this domain.

The objective was to develop an open-source learning platform and deploy free MOOCs in public procurement.

The Solution:

We partnered with the Multi-Lateral Agency to provide an integrated solution that incorporated e-content development, branding & digital marketing, technology, and learner support.

e-content

Different formats of MOOC were deployed – 100% self-paced, blended with significant online along with five days classroom, highly interactive case-study based. All content were interactive and some of the courses also offered in Hindi and five international languages.

Technology

We designed the specifications for the learning portal collaborating with the agency. A highly customized learning portal was built using open-source tools like Moodle and PHP technologies. We continue to host and maintain the solution for the last eight years. The servers are hosted in a Level 4 data center with certificates on Service, Security, and mirroring along with regular backups and archiving.

Support

We designed the framework and Standards Operating Procedures for 24 x 7 learner support initially. Since the last 2 years this has changed to a 16×7 support.

Branding & Promotion:

Designed and deployed overall branding and promotion that included Pay-per-Click, 3rd Party Banners, E-Mail Marketing, and social media for learner awareness & registration. Digital Interventions were designed and executed to drive course completion, given that the target audience was made up of Government officials who had voluntarily enrolled for the course.

Technology

This learning portal is built with a highly customized framework, with the help of open source tools like WordPress, Moodle, and PHP technologies. This is also compatible with open and single signing models. All partner institutions are given a private place to conduct blended training, webinars, forums, and expert chats using the learning portal. The finances and the administration of institutes are also managed through this portal only. Apart from all these functions, C&K is also acting as a nodal agency to implement the decisions taken by the World Bank or Charter for Public Procurement Studies from time-to-time.

The Impact:

The portal has attracted a total of over 0.5 million visitors and learner registrations are nearly 200,000. Learners come from 190+ countries. 60,000 queries have been answered through live chats, mails and over-the-phone. Feedback from learners has been that the learning is useful and can be deployed at work, which should help make public procurement more efficient.