Exploring anti-corruption capabilities of e-procurement in construction project delivery in Nigeria

The use of electronic (e-­) procurement to support the execution of supply chain management activities in the different industrial sectors is permeating all regions of the world. However, in countries in sub-Saharan Africa where there is a significant level of corruption and unethical practices in the procurement process, there is a need for a better understanding of how e-Procurement can help to check the incidence of corrupt and unethical practices in construction project delivery. This study relied on a cross-sectional survey of 759 respondents, including architects, builders, engineers, estate/facilities managers, contractors, construction/project managers, quantity surveyors, supply chain managers and others to identify and analyse the anti-corruption capabilities of e-Procurement in construction project delivery in Nigeria. The results of the descriptive statistics, relative importance index and principal components analysis identified 18 anti-corruption capabilities in e-Procurement in construction project delivery with the three most important ones being the capability of e-Procurement to ensure good inventory management/record keeping; accountability by providing audit services trail and minimise direct human contacts during bidding. The key underlying dimensions of these capabilities include the advantage of e-Procurement over the traditional paper-based method; transparent bidding process and increase in competition in construction project delivery process. The findings of this study have implications, especially, on the use of e-Procurement to curb corruption in construction procurement activities

Examination of Regional Transit Service Under Contracting: A Case Study in the Greater New Orleans Region, Research Report 10-09

Many local governments and transit agencies in the United States face financial difficulties in providing adequate public transit service in individual systems, and in providing sufficient regional coordination to accommodate transit trips involving at least one transfer between systems. These difficulties can be attributed to the recent economic downturn, continuing withdrawal of the state and federal funds that help support local transit service, a decline in local funding for transit service in inner cities due to ongoing suburbanization, and a distribution of resources that responds to geographic equity without addressing service needs. This study examines two main research questions: (1) the effect of a “delegated management” contract on efficiency and effectiveness within a single transit system, and (2) the effects of a single private firm—contracted separately by more than one agency in the same region—on regional coordination, exploring the case in Greater New Orleans. The current situation in New Orleans exhibits two unique transit service conditions. First, New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (RTA) executed a “delegated management” contract with a multinational private firm, outsourcing more functions (e.g., management, planning, funding) to the contractor than has been typical in the U.S. Second, as the same contractor has also been contracted by another transit agency in an adjacent jurisdiction—Jefferson Transit (JeT), this firm may potentially have economic incentives to improve regional coordination, in order to increase the productivity and effectiveness of its own transit service provision. Although the limited amount of available operation and financial data has prevented us from drawing more definitive conclusions, the findings of this multifaceted study should provide valuable information on a transit service contracting approach new to the U.S.: delegated management. This study also identified a coherent set of indices with which to evaluate the regional coordination of transit service, the present status of coordination among U.S. transit agencies, and barriers that need to be resolved for regional transit coordination to be successful

Misuse case modeling for secure e-tendering system

Tendering process is utilized by principal to invited capable tenderer to participate in competitive bid for winning a large project.Due to advent of IT infrastructure, E-tendering is introduced and adopted in many countries. Yet, an electronic environment did not promise curbing collusion between principal and certain tenderers. Other than common threats to system like security breaches by malicious parties, security issue related to ethical issue like fraud and repudiation issue where no evidence existed to denied it.In this paper, common threats for e-tendering process altogether with security countermeasure are described. This three interrelated attribute (consist of tender phase, threat and security countermeasure) are illustrated in misuse case for better understanding of the risk that may occurs in particular tender phase. Furthermore, it sought to ease the system developer for designing and constructing a secure e-tendering system

A Secured Model of E-Tendering Using Unified Modeling Language Approach

E-Tendering systems remain uncertain on issues relating to legal and security compliance, in which unclear security framework is one of the issues. In te current situation, tendering systems are lacking in addressing integrity, confidentiality, authentication, and non-repudiation. Thus, ensuring the system requirements, consider security and trust issues has to be regarded as one of the challenges in developing an e-Tendering system. Therefore, this paper a model of a secured e-Tendering system using Unified Modeling Language (UML) approach. The modelling process begins with identifying the e-Tendering process, which is based on Australian Standard Code of Tendering (AS 4120-1994). It is followed by identifying the security threats and its countermeasure. The use case approach has been proven reliable in determining appropriate requirements for handling security issues. Having considered that, the outcome of this paper is a secured e-Tendering model. The model can guide developers as well as other researchers

Design of Tender Management System

One of the E-government initiatives is the development of the government-to-business (G2B) system, which is an agenda sets to promote a higher service quality between government entities and the business sector. In Jordan, the vision of E-government would be an essential and active participant in the social development and economic with ICT to enable easy access to government services and information. The tender process in Jordan will be assessing based on the capital of the enterprises in order to be tender. However, the main user is the problem of corruption in the selection of tender. This proposal is to develop tender management system for public sector in Jordan, as well as to reduce corruption. The prototype will develop by using C# language , and the research design adopted the general methodology. The evaluation was based on usability testing with the System Usability Scale (SUS) proposed by Brooke. The prototype was assessed by a sample consists of thirty eight respondents. The results have been positive; when the respondents should that they are able to use the system

Towards the adoption of E-Tendering in the public sector of the Egyptian construction industry

The construction public sector in Egypt, like most countries in the world, is tendering its projects through the traditional paper-based tendering procedure, which has many weaknesses including bureaucracy and lack of transparency. Due to the considerable volume of projects tendered each year, it was therefore essential to study the possibility of implementing another more efficient procedure that would overcome the inefficiencies of the paper-based tendering procedure. The main aim of this research is to improve the uptake of E-Tendering in Egypt through highlighting the best technical/operational practices that should be adopted, identifying the barriers, challenges and concerns of the Egyptian tenderers and providing solutions to address them. An identification and analysis of the current level of adoption/implementation of E-Tendering in Egypt is carried out through thoroughly examining the literature and through conducting two semi-structured face-to-face expert interviews. The findings show that there is evidence that Egypt is moving steadily but on a slower pace towards adopting E-Tendering within the governmental entities, especially that, so far, few steps/measures were taken in this regard towards the Egyptian tenderers. Hence, the barriers and concerns to the implementation of E-Tendering in many foreign countries have been thoroughly examined through the literature review. 19 challenges are highlighted and categorized into 4 categories: security challenges, user acceptance and staff resistance, accessibility issues and legal barriers. These challenges are then examined and ranked with respect to their importance by a panel of 15 academic and industry experts to identify whether or not they will face the Egyptian tenderers. The most important highlighted barriers are the SMEs access difficulties (Relative Importance Index RII%= 88.33%), the expected technical malfunctioning of the portal (RII% = 86.67%), the reluctance/resistance to change (RII% = 80%), the breach of confidentiality of information (RII% = 76.67%), the electronic signature problems (RII % = 76.67%) and the document tampering (RII% = 75%). In addition, literature is carefully examined to point out/come up with solutions/recommendations to the barriers, challenges and concerns of the tenderers in Egypt. The effectiveness of these solutions/recommendations is thoroughly analyzed by the same panel of experts. The findings showed that the identified barriers are completely neutralized and successfully addressed by the presented solutions/recommendations, hence, they should be adopted and implemented since improving the uptake of E-Tendering in Egypt is only achievable when addressing the needs of its stakeholders and especially the tenderers

Building on the value of Victoria’s community sector

Building on the value of Victoria’s community sector goes beyond the sector’s economic contribution. It discusses the value of all Victoria’s community sector organisations, including those operating with registered charitable status and those operating without. The paper also outlines broader aspects of the community sector’s value than just the economic. These include the sector’s unique ability to amplify the voice of people facing disadvantage and build relationships with those who most need support, its diversity, its innovative and collaborative nature, its focus on prevention and early intervention, and its ability to build community cohesion and wellbeing. While outlining these, Building on the value of Victoria’s community sector also outlines ways in which this value can be further built on, to generate even more benefit for people and communities facing disadvantage, and Victoria as a whole

Designing Competition in Urban Bus Passenger Transport Lessons from Uzbekistan

Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies. Faculty of Economics and Business. The University of Sydne

Moebius strip enterprises and expertise in the creative industries: new challenges for lifelong learning?

The paper argues that the emergence of a new mode of production – co-configuration is generating new modes of expertise that EU policies for lifelong learning are not designed to support professionals to develop. It maintains that this change can be seen most clearly when we analyse Small and Medium Size (SMEs) enterprises in the creative industries. Drawing on concepts from Political Economy - ‘Moebius strip enterprise/expertise’ and Cultural Historical Activity Theory - project-object’ and the ‘space of reasons’, the paper highlights conceptually and through a case study of an SME in the creative industries what is distinctive about the new modes of expertise, before moving on to reconceptualise expertise and learning and to consider the implications of this reconceptualisation for EU policies for lifelong learning. The paper concludes that the new challenge for LLL is to support the development of new forms expertise that are difficult to credentialise, yet, are central to the wider European goal of realising a knowledge economy