Time and Cost Efficiency Analysis of Manual and e-Procurement Systems in Roads and Highways Department: TEC Meeting Arrangement Perspective

Public procurement ensures accountability, time, and cost savings in procuring goods, works, and services. All government departments use manual and electronic tendering processes to purchase goods and services. The Roads and Highways Department (RHD) is one of the big public departments designated as the study’s target population. Manual and e-procurement tendering systems are used by all RHD procurement entities (PE). However, time and cost reduction are significant challenges in the manual tendering process. Because,  it involves a lengthy process for Tender Evaluation Committee (TEC) meeting arrangements. However, no time and cost comparison study of the manual and e-GP tendering processes for TEC meeting arrangement has been done in RHD after e-procurement inception in 2011. This study uses a stratified sampling strategy to compare the time and cost of a manual tendering procedure to an e-tendering approach, targeting RHD PE officers as samples. The independent samples t-test model was used to compare two groups utilizing the mean value of TEC meeting arrangement time and cost of the e-tender system and the manual tender system as a continuous normally distributed variable. This study makes a unique contribution by comparing the time and cost efficiency of two sets of manual and e-tender procurement methods. The e-procurement system, according to the survey results, reduced excessive times and costs at TEC meeting arrangements. The findings will also be used to enhance academic research and to improve e-GP policy requirements.

Keywords: e-GP policy guideline; procurement efficiency; t-test; TEC meeting arrangement time; e-procurement; accountability; TEC meeting arrangement cost