The World Bank Burkina Faso Electronic Government Procurement Support Project Information Document/ Identification/Concept Stage (PID) Public Disclosure Copy Concept Stage | Date Prepared/Updated: 29-Mar-2021 | Report No: PIDC239218 Mar 29, 2021 Page 1 of 9 The World Bank Burkina Faso Electronic Government Procurement Support BASIC INFORMATION A. Basic Project Data Environmental and Project ID Parent Project ID (if any) Social Risk Project Name Classification Low Burkina Faso Electronic P176026 Government Procurement Support Region Country Date PID Prepared Estimated Date of Approval AFRICA WEST Burkina Faso 29-Mar-2021 Financing Instrument Borrower(s) Implementing Agency Public Disclosure Copy Direction Generale de Controle et des Investment Project Ministry of Finance and Engagements Financing Development Financiers, Ministry of Finance and Development PROJECT FINANCING DATA (US$, Millions) SUMMARY -NewFin1 Total Project Cost 0.50 Total Financing 0.50 Financing Gap 0.00 DETAILS -NewFinEnh1 Non-World Bank Group Financing Trust Funds 0.50 Trust Funds 0.50 B. Introduction and Context Country Context 1. COUNTRY CONTEXT Mar 29, 2021 Page 2 of 9 The World Bank Burkina Faso Electronic Government Procurement Support 1. Burkina Faso is one of the poorest countries in the world. Its gross national income per capita was only US$640 in 2016. Burkina Faso is ranked 185th out of 188 countries on the UNDP Human Development Index. It has the lowest mean years of schooling of all countries for which data is available – a mere 1.4 years. Eight out of 10 citizens live on less than US$ 3 per day. 2. Demographic context: Burkina Faso is a land-locked country in the Sahel region in West Africa and has a national territory that spans 274,200km. The population is currently estimated at 18.5 million, with an annual population growth rate of about 3.2 percent. Burkina Faso is a young country, with most the population under 30 years of age. 3. Political context: Since Independence in 1960, Burkina Faso has experienced long periods of political stability interrupted by relatively short-lived crises. While these political crises have a range of causes, they can be partly explained by the high and increasing levels of concentration of political and economic power. In recent years, the political system has become increasingly unstable especially after the discovery of massive gold reserves which has created new revenue opportunities for the Public Disclosure Copy elites. The most recent episode of instability occurred in 2014, when former President Compaoré was expelled from power. The transition period lasted for one year, ending with the organization of free and fair presidential and legislative elections in November 2015. 4. Economic context: In recent years Burkina Faso has made progress with building a stable macroeconomic environment, and with working toward an integrated and open regional economic space. Over the past 15 years, the economy expanded by about 5.4 percent annually. Projections suggest that the contribution made by demographic change alone will more than double in coming years, reinforcing the potential of a demographic dividend, but also of a demographic crisis. As of 2014, an overwhelming 42.3 percent of the working-age population were under age 30. Three- quarters of this population had little to no education. 5. Geographic context: As the country is situated in the Sahel region, Burkina Faso experiences some of the most radical climatic variation in the world, ranging from severe flooding to extreme drought. The unpredictable climatic shocks that the country faces result in difficulties with being able to rely solely on agriculture. Due to the vulnerability of the agriculture sector, more and more families are having to seek other sources of non-farm income and often travel outside of their regions to find employment Sectoral and Institutional Context The Government of Burkina Faso has assessed his Public Procurement Systems based on the Methodology for Assessing Procurement Systems (MAPS). The assessment shows that the procurement system presents substantial compliance with the recommendations of internationally recognized good practices. The main challenges to be addressed relate to the modernization of tools (tools for the procurement, execution and production of statistics), the regularity of audits, the implementation of a real training strategy, adequate funding for ARCOP and strengthening transparency, by improving public information. Despite the existence of the Integrated Public Procurement Information System (SIMP), most of the operations relating to the implementation of the public procurement procedure are carried out manually. Mar 29, 2021 Page 3 of 9 The World Bank Burkina Faso Electronic Government Procurement Support One of the main recommendation of the MAPS assessment is to set up an electronic management system for the public procurement procedure, allowing electronic management of the procedure (from procurement planning to final handover certification including monitoring of contract management ), decentralized to the contracting authorities and interfaced with the existing Integrated Financial Management and Information System. On June 16th, 2020 an eGP readiness initiative , was launched under the Economic Governance and Citizen Engagement Project (P155121) with the following objectives : to (i) determine the level of country’s e-GP readiness to make a transition to e-GP in a sustainable manner (with reference to the MDB e-GP Readiness Assessment Guidelines;, (ii) develop Bank’s support strategy for the implementation of e-GP in Burkina Faso taking into consideration the importance and risks associated with levels of technological capacity, infrastructure, organization and expertise within the public and private sectors in the country (with reference to the MDB e-GP Strategic Planning and Roadmap Guidelines). Public Disclosure Copy In developing this strategy, the consultant will draw on experiences of countries around the World and will tailor the approaches and methodologies for implementation to the Burkina Faso context. The interim outcome of these objectives will be a report that describes the current situation in Burkina Faso with respect to its readiness to adopt an e-GP system accompanied by a strategy that the Bank would consider under a phased approach to best suit its gradual adoption. Relationship to CPF This grant is fully aligned with the focus area of Objective 3.2 of Burkina Faso FY18-23 CPF specifically relating to strengthening citizen engagement and public sector accountability and strengthening implementation of projects. C. Project Development Objective(s) Proposed Development Objective(s) The main objective of this grant is to assist Burkina Faso in improving performance of the public procurement system by enhancing efficiency and increasing transparency of public bidding, through the implementation of an e- Procurement system. Key Results  An e-Procurement system pilot has been developed  3 ministries (infrastructure, agriculture/ digital ministry and health) are using the developed e- procurement system during the pilot period  Minimum of 50 contracts in total ( 10 high value contacts/projects) will be processed  5 users/projects: 1 main user and 3 evaluators (member of procurement committee) will be identified  50 users are trained via electronic e-procurement system Mar 29, 2021 Page 4 of 9 The World Bank Burkina Faso Electronic Government Procurement Support D. Preliminary Description Activities/Components The main objective of this grant is to assist Burkina Faso in improving performance of the public procurement system by enhancing efficiency and increasing transparency of public bidding, through the implementation of an e-Procurement system. Scope of Work The activities to support Burkina Faso to enhance the performance of public procurement by implementing an e-Procurement system, developing useful performance indicators, developing skills and capacity building along with contracting authorities and local economic operators. The scope of work is divided into three Public Disclosure Copy components. Component 1: e-GP preparation (Requirements, Procurement Design/development) The first activity is to resolve a question of designing and producing the legislative and regulatory projects deemed necessary for a legally sound adoption of the e-GP. A task force will deal exclusively with the preparation of the draft law on the e-GP and the respective regulatory diplomas. Questions such as the principles of the e-GP, the system of organization and access to the public digital market - the access and exercise of the activity of providing services related to the e-GP - the organization of the transition from the paper-based system to the e-GP, the organizational and administrative processes to be redesigned and the forms, are examples of topics to be covered. It will also be envisaged, rather than developing a draft legislation from scratch, modifications or additional regulation (to take into account the specificities of the e-GP) will need to be proposed in the legislation already in force or in being developed under the guidance of other bodies and supervisors (for example, the regulations necessary for the accreditation of trust service providers). Another aspect of this first activity is the development of this system that requires a thorough assessment of the capacities of procuring entities and economic operators in order to choose the best model for the modernization of the public procurement system. The assessment to be conducted will identify the means which will produce best results in specific areas and regions of the Burkina Faso. The definition of the optimal solution will especially consider the level of development of information technology and communication technologies, as well as the specificities of the electronic government in the Burkina Faso. Functional Requirements and Technical Specifications In the second activity, the analysis will also permit the development of e-procurement functionalities, such as e-Tendering, with user-friendly applications for procurement entities and economic operators. As such, the objective is to create a set of functional requirement and technical specifications based on the findings of the Mar 29, 2021 Page 5 of 9 The World Bank Burkina Faso Electronic Government Procurement Support e-procurement analysis delivered during the first objective. The creation of these requirements should ease the use of the e-procurement system for the procurement entities. More specifically, as in paper-based systems, there are also certain standard documents in the e-GP, also referred to in some cases as forms. While it is true that some do not require any adaptation in terms of content (for example general and specific legal clauses to be included in the tender dossier), others must "adapt to the language and the 'digital environment' (eg forms or ad templates). Also, the team must guarantee the timely production of Manuals and Technical Directives necessary to describe the e-GP system, its main components, user access modes, transaction processing, the material results of the system and, above all, the guarantees of security and integrity of the system and the mechanisms put in place to guarantee its availability and quality. Public Procurement Performance Indicators Public Disclosure Copy The third activity includes identifying performance in public procurement. Defining economic indicators will enable better monitoring of the implementation of public procurement operators (PPO) which will result in a better identification of issues to which the PPO can react accordingly in terms of creating or modifying policies in the area of public finances. Also, the data and analytics captured based on these indicators will influence and facilitate decision making as well as new research in other sectors (infrastructures, social, etc.). The data collection should be in machine -readable format and offer a good search engine. Then, it will be envisaged that the proposed e-GP system will have a "Procurement Performance indicators" module, which will automatically collect data for other e-GP modules such as e-planning, e-tendering, e-contract management, etc. and generate standard procurement performance report. This approach will save time and effort and ensure quality reporting. Component 2: e-Procurement Implementation (e-Tendering) This Component will address the tendering process of the e-Procurement system focusing on implementation an e-Tendering based on the functional requirements and technical specifications which are outputs from component 1, e-Procurement preparation. The e-Tendering module provides the necessary functionality for MDAs and economic operators to communicate in order to clarify aspects of the tender and to enable economic operators to prepare their bids and upload them onto the system. In system terms, it entails the creation of an Internet-accessible virtual workspace dedicated to a specific tender within which all respective tendering activities are performed. The workspace is accessible only by economic operators associated with the tender. These users are provided with all the necessary functionality to perform, at a minimum, the following activities:  Economic Operators to request clarifications (i.e., questions)  MDAs to respond to the received clarification requests (i.e., answers)  Economic Operators to create their bids electronically  Economic Operators to submit their bids through the system Mar 29, 2021 Page 6 of 9 The World Bank Burkina Faso Electronic Government Procurement Support The following e-Procurement modules are prerequisites: E-Registration Bids must be created and submitted only by specific authenticated and authorized users. Registration/authentication/authorization processes are undertaken by the e-Registration module. Electronic bid withdrawal/substitution prior to the submission deadline. E-Publishing/Notification The tender documentation, questionnaire, and process rules and conditions, as well as the deadline for EOs to request clarifications, the deadline for bid submissions, etc., are all defined during the e- Publication/Notification phase; hence, it is strongly suggested that an e-Procurement system supporting the Public Disclosure Copy e-Tendering module be coupled with the e-Publishing/Notification module. E-Evaluation/e-Awarding A bid evaluation can be performed in a controlled manner if it is based on well-structured bids that have been created and submitted through the e-Tendering module. E-Procurement Plan The e-Procurement Plan module provides the necessary system functionality for the designated users to periodically set up a procurement plan exercise according to their needs, defining the budgets for all goods, works, and services to be secured through procurement competitions. The proposed e-GP system shall have the flexibility to include additional modules for future enhancement such as e-contract management, e-catalog, e-payment, etc. It is also important that the proposed system shall have the flexibility to intergrade with budget and accounts in the future. Component 3 – Capacity Building In FCV and IDA countries there is a challenge to roll out e-Procurement even if it can be quite straight forward to implement e-Procurement systems as they are readily available on the market, and easy to customize/configure to meet the country context. This is justified by the shortage of funding and the lack of a solid strategy for rolling out the e-Procurement system throughout the country to the various stakeholders including Public Procurement Authority, the Procurement Entities and the Supplier community. To this end, Burkina Faso should spend extra efforts to ensure the proper rollout and adoption of the e-Procurement system. Robust Rollout and Adoption Strategy Mar 29, 2021 Page 7 of 9 The World Bank Burkina Faso Electronic Government Procurement Support It is imperative that a thorough rollout and adoption plan be developed, as the absence of a clear-cut strategy can lead to low e-Procurement adoption and use. A dedicated team should lead the rollout effort, and it is highly recommended that an oversight committee be established to oversee e-Procurement implementation activities. Consider Change Management Efforts Consideration should be made to modify management efforts as needed as e-Procurement is implemented. Change management activities include promoting, marketing, and increasing e-Procurement adoption through effective communication with the various stakeholder groups. A key component of any change management plan is the development of strategies to address implementation risks and overcome workforce resistance to change. In addition to face to face training, tutorial a dedicated help desk will be required. Managing a dedicated help Public Disclosure Copy desk has cost implications and may and will be discussed before the project closing. This component includes also the evaluation of the pilot and the development of the roll out strategy Environmental and Social Standards Relevance E. Relevant Standards ESS Standards Relevance Assessment and Management of Environmental and Social ESS 1 Relevant Risks and Impacts ESS 10 Stakeholder Engagement and Information Disclosure Relevant ESS 2 Labor and Working Conditions Relevant Resource Efficiency and Pollution Prevention and ESS 3 Not Currently Relevant Management ESS 4 Community Health and Safety Not Currently Relevant Land Acquisition, Restrictions on Land Use and Involuntary ESS 5 Not Currently Relevant Resettlement Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Management of ESS 6 Not Currently Relevant Living Natural Resources Indigenous Peoples/Sub-Saharan African Historically ESS 7 Not Currently Relevant Underserved Traditional Local Communities ESS 8 Cultural Heritage Not Currently Relevant ESS 9 Financial Intermediaries Not Currently Relevant Legal Operational Policies Mar 29, 2021 Page 8 of 9 The World Bank Burkina Faso Electronic Government Procurement Support Safeguard Policies Triggered Explanation (Optional) Projects on International Waterways OP No 7.50 Projects in Disputed Areas OP 7.60 No Summary of Screening of Environmental and Social Risks and Impacts NA CONTACT POINT World Bank Public Disclosure Copy Contact : Mathias Gogohounga Title : Senior Procurement Specialist Telephone No : 5354+6306 Email : Contact : Sidy Diop Title : Senior Procurement Specialist Telephone No : 5351+2238 / Email : Borrower/Client/Recipient Borrower : Ministry of Finance and Development Contact : Inoussa OUIMINGA Title : DGCOOP Telephone No : 0022670248325 Email : jouiminga@yahoo.fr Implementing Agencies Implementing Direction Generale de Controle et des Engagements Financiers, Ministry of Finance and Agency : Development Contact : Salif Ouedraogo Title : DGCMEF Telephone No : 22676620002 Email : safoued@yahoo.fr FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT The World Bank 1818 H Street, NW Washington, D.C. 20433 Telephone: (202) 473-1000 Web: http://www.worldbank.org/projects Mar 29, 2021 Page 9 of 9