E-Procurement Implementation: Critical Analysis of Success Factors' Impact on Project Outcome

Abstract

The 21st century has seen migration of many governance functions and services to Internet. The terms like e-Governance and m-Governance are no more unfamiliar words but are political reality. The adoption of e-procurement by government entities to optimise and economise public procurements has been the buzzword of transparent governance. In fact e-procurement has been touted as panacea for corruption and bureaucratic red-tapism. Literature is replete with studies which underline numerous benefits of migration of procurement functions to Internet. However, e-Government procurement has not taken off in India through it is an Integrated Mission Mode Project as a part of National e-Governance Project (NeGP) launched by Govt of India in 2006. A recent review of the e-procurement implementation by DIT, Ministry of Communication & IT brought out that the progress e-procurement project implementation has been dismal. In this backdrop, we undertook study of contemporary research literature to identify Critical Success Factors for e-procurement project implementation. The research methodology followed included analysis based on an elaborate study of e-procurement literature, pertinent government orders and multinational/ international agreements to identify Critical Success Factors. The study concludes that existing literature indicates flat nature of CSF i.e. there is no relation with the stage of e-GP implementation vs significance of a CSF. Therefore, existing CSFs and their study models do not aid managerial decision making by project managers. Finally, the paper brings out research gaps and suggests direction for future research for making e-GP a success in India.

Keywords: public procurement, e-procurement, critical success factors, project management