KATHMANDU: With the aim of making the public procurement system more transparent, secure and reliable, the Ministry of Infrastructure Development has developed and brought into operation a new bidding system with security technology.
Earlier, the government had shut down the EGP system implemented by the Government of Nepal a month ago due to security challenges after it was targeted by foreign cyber attackers. Apart from this, there was a situation where the server crashed at the last moment of submission of tenders, data leaked before opening the bid, and when there was a problem with the internet or server, there was a compulsion to return to the paperwork due to lack of alternative remedies.
Minister for Physical Infrastructure and Transport Sunil Lamsal has said that the new system has been developed by the Ministry considering the complaints of the users and all these weaknesses, which is more secure, faster and completely transparent than before.
Minister Lamsal said that the new system is equipped with the latest ‘Efficient Web Framework’ and security standards, besides ensuring excellent performance, the use of DOS Protection, Rate Limit, Bot Protection technology will be able to handle any traffic or cyber attack.
Earlier, there was a fear of leakage of the bidder’s bid amount, but now client side encryption and multi-share quorum based bid encryption and decryption have been implemented. This will prevent anyone from seeing the bid amount until the official time for opening the bid is reached. In addition, two-factor authentication for secure access and at least two-party session-based approval has been made mandatory for sensitive tasks.
In the old system, there was no clear record of user activity, but now there is an immutable audit mechanism and WORA based instantaneous resistant storage. This will leave a permanent record of who viewed or used the data in the system at what time.
In the new system, bidders will be able to securely revise their bids within the stipulated time frame. This amendment will ensure both legal validity and complete confidentiality as the old data will not be erased and the new version will be encrypted.
Minister Lamsal informed that the Ministry is planning to add the following state-of-the-art facilities gradually in the second phase to make the system more automated.
The system will automatically generate a ‘System Generated Standard Bidding Document’, which will eliminate the hassle of manual documentation and human errors. Apart from this, suspicious activities such as bidding in collusion or multiple bids from the same computer will be identified and ‘red flags’ will be shown.
The system will be directly connected to the Department of Revenue and Nepal Rastra Bank and the system will be made to pull the details of tax payment and blacklisting. The system will automatically verify the bank guarantee by connecting the APIs directly with the banks to solve the problem of fake bank guarantees. Also, in the future, the system will be ensured that the offline bid can be submitted safely through the ‘digital lockbox’ even in the case of an emergency without a network.
With the advent of the new bidding system, the problem of data theft and server latency has ended forever. The ministry has urged to take this system not just as a website, but as a strong digital foundation to protect the national treasury and fair competition.
Any suggestions or suggestions regarding the new bidding system can be sent to the official email [email protected] of the Ministry of Infrastructure Development.
