Enabling Public Accountability through ERP: Designing Transparent Procurement Systems for Local Governments

Abstract

The ability of a public institution to have transparency and accountability in the procurement operations is greatly compromised by the presence of legacy systems that impede visibility and may lead to inefficiencies and abuse of the process. Enterprise resource planning platforms present impelling opportunities to local governments to transform their operations, and the intrinsic operation is to modernize their procurement practices with mutual accountability meshed into the system. Conventional procurement practices using paper-based document processing and disjointed systems bring huge inefficiencies into any operation, inconsistencies in data, and put compliance issues at risk that compromise democracy and confidence in the system. Modern-day ERP systems address these issues by offering automated onboarding of suppliers, on-the-fly budget checks, extensive audit logs, and transparency reporting components. Empirical observations of government agencies that have deployed integrated procurement solutions evidence significant gains in both cycle time reduction, error-free processes, and improvement of compliance with the laws and regulations, as well as giving citizens greater access to information about how the government funds are spent. Automated processes allow organizations to focus on the strategic processes, as well as providing rigid checks of their processes in digital monitoring and real-time reporting. The strategic advantages do not only lie in operational enhancements but also in the ability to generate a high level of trust by the general populace, increased vendor relations, and better democratic accountability, as they have readily available reporting systems showing they are indeed being prudent in utilizing the funds given to them.