Uganda is preparing to launch an e-government procurement (e-Gp) system with the first round of training hosted today by the system contractor at the offices of the Ministry of ICT and National Guidance.

The pilot programme is scheduled for rollout in July 2018 and is expected to make the process of public procurement more efficient, transparent and accountable.

Benson Turamye, Executive Director at the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets Authority (PPDA) says corruption will be minimised when e-Gp is fully functional because it will replace the current manual process of procurement used with in public institutions.

"There will be no interaction between bidders and officials. Also, side-deals can't be negotiated on the system. With the introduction of the e-Gp system corruption will be no more. We benchmarked this system and we assure Ugandans that it will save 30% of wasteful government expenditure."

The e-Gp system will be piloted in ten of Uganda's Procuring and Disposing Entities (PDEs) according to the PPDA from early July 2018.

The entities taking part include the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets Authority, Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, the Ministry of Water, Uganda National Roads Agency, Uganda Civil Aviation Authority, Kampala Capital City Authority, National Information Technology Authority of Uganda, District Local Governments of Jinja and Mpigi, as well as the country's National Social Security Fund.

Frank Tumwebaze, Minister of ICT and National Guidance agreed with Turamye that there will be fewer incidents of corruption when the e-Gp system is eventually rolled out countrywide, saying, "This why the Ministry of ICT is determined to take all government services online. I thank the ministries, departments, agencies that are complying."

The Strategy and Roadmap for the Implementation of e-Government Procurement in Uganda policy document was first published in 2014 when the country announced plans for e-GP.

It estimated that the total cost of the project in the five years, between 2014 and 2019, would be in the region of US$1,500,000.

The acquisition and implementation of the system was calculated to cost US$1,000,000.00 and the balance would be allocated to a review of the strength of the system's security for three years.

Uganda is currently ranked 114th out of 137 countries overall on the World Economic Forum (WEF) latest Global Competitiveness Index. In terms of criteria governing ethics and corruption exclusively, the country is placed in 112th position.

WEF scored the country 2.9 out of 7 for its technological readiness.