It is a suggestive title, difficult to approach, however, in this short article we will make an effort, hoping not to be indebted to the reader.
Constantly and more in the last weeks, we have seen a citizen need reflected in social networks and media, evidencing the lack of medicines in hospitals, of supplies in the Civil Registry, the lack of works and in general, the lack of adequate public services.
Looking for an answer, we considered certain alternatives: lack of resources, management inefficiency, bureaucratic procedures and lack of knowledge (both of the rules and of public administration); at the end of the day, it turns out to be a sum of all and many others.
To carry out a public procurement procedure in Ecuador is a high risk sport, it starts with a need that is not enough that it exists, it must be demonstrated (motivated and technically supported by studies), the next step is to have the resources and previously, prepare a reference budget according to the market that allows the State to buy at the right price, the goods, works or services required, and thus, once we have all the authorizations, we can prepare the bidding documents (bases of the contest that are on average at least 50 sheets).
Once the procedure is initiated, the supplier must prepare its offer (since the State, as a matter of principle, cannot contract with whom it wants, but with whom it must), a stage to which many hours must be dedicated in order to gather all the requirements from the interested parties and upload them to the public procurement platform.
The bids are qualified; this is a task that can become entangled by technical criteria, even disjunctive due to the lack of clarity that the legal provisions may have at the time of applying them; to this is added the possibility of receiving complaints from citizens, bidders or control entities.
If up to this point the procedure is kept alive, overcoming all the obstacles that exist along the way, the decision capacity of the officials (discretion) continues, with respect to validating or not errors, or even choosing a winner; being necessary that the officials in charge of this task, make an effort (within what the norm allows), to be able to adjudicate avoiding that, at the first change, it is cancelled or declared void due to simple ignorance or fears of their officials.
If a contract is signed, we have an official who must ensure its full compliance, while his counterpart must meet the objectives within the established deadlines, in order to collect the agreed price for the services, goods or works to be provided, trying to overcome: penalties, fines and threats of early termination.
As we can see, it is not an easy task to carry out public procurement in this country; however, it is absolutely necessary to demand qualified, honest officials with a vocation for service in order to comply with the plans of all levels of government and to responsibly manage the general interest; but above all, to comply with the citizens, with their needs, without forgetting their suppliers, without whom the State could not fulfill its purposes and to whom we should dedicate a space similar to the one we have had here.
Juan Francisco Diaz, MSc
Teacher of the Master's Degree in Public Administration - Online Mode
