By Signe Bāliņa, President of the Latvian Information and Communications Technology Association (LIKTA).
We have become accustomed to using the e-services provided by the state and municipalities in our everyday lives. They are practical and convenient, which is why we become frustrated when one of them is temporarily unavailable or when a long-promised digital service takes too long to implement. The governance crisis that has emerged in Latvia’s public information and communication technology (ICT) sector provides a timely opportunity to improve cooperation between the public and private sectors on ICT projects that matter to society, modernise governance in the sector, and strengthen project management.
There is no doubt that Latvia’s ICT sector is a source of national pride. Its annual turnover amounts to €5.8 billion, and it is the country’s fourth-largest taxpayer. Public-sector procurement accounts for only 5% of the industry’s total turnover, yet the consequences of shortcomings in public ICT projects are felt across society. In the view of the Latvian Information and Communications Technology Association (LIKTA), efforts should currently focus on three areas: strengthening the competence of contracting authorities, reinforcing a unified national digital architecture, and modernising the public procurement system and its requirements.
When working on public-sector projects, LIKTA members regularly encounter weak ICT project management on the contracting authority’s side. This means that organisational leaders often struggle to maintain control over projects and remove obstacles that arise during implementation. ICT projects are also frequently implemented in isolation from other organisational processes and from the broader needs of Latvia’s e-government ecosystem.
In our view, Latvia should adopt best practices from other EU Member States and organise public-sector ICT projects in the same way as the private sector does. An ICT project should address the needs of the organisation as a whole, including change management. The objectives of the ICT system should be defined in advance, together with its total cost of ownership (TCO) and the expected efficiency gains. Each project should have a clearly designated business owner with the authority to make decisions, remove obstacles and take responsibility for measurable results. Finally, before launching a procurement procedure, a feasibility assessment should be carried out. This should include dialogue between the contracting authority and the industry, examining comparable examples, assessing similar systems already available on the market, and evaluating whether developing a new system is justified.
Second, all stakeholders should focus on developing public e-services as part of a unified digital platform. This is not currently the case: approximately 1,000 different state information systems are used across Latvia’s public sector. Those responsible for individual systems often do not see how their system fits into the country’s broader ICT architecture.
LIKTA therefore proposes considering the establishment of an empowered and competent national ICT council capable of prioritising projects and assessing their compliance with the overall national ICT architecture. This would help ensure interoperability between systems and prevent inefficient use of resources. At the same time, knowledge and expertise should be concentrated in competence centres to ensure professional project management and consistency of ICT architecture across the public sector.
An excellent example of such knowledge consolidation is the ICT Governance Leaders’ Forum organised by the Ministry of Smart Administration and Regional Development (VARAM). Good examples from other sectors include the services provided by State Real Estate (VAS “Valsts nekustamie īpašumi”) in organising construction procurement and managing projects, as well as the technical specification standards for road construction and maintenance maintained by Latvian State Roads (VAS “Latvijas Valsts ceļi”).
Together, these measures would move us closer to a situation in which every solution forms part of a centrally managed ICT portfolio, with clear accountability, measurable KPIs and regular reporting throughout its entire lifecycle.
Third, Latvia should significantly modernise its approach to public-sector procurement. LIKTA has prepared a range of proposals covering various aspects of procurement, including the assessment of bidders’ qualifications. Most importantly, high-quality tender evaluation criteria should ensure that contracts are awarded to bidders capable of providing higher-quality services and delivering the outcomes intended by the contracting authority.
For example, the State Revenue Service already includes a practical assignment in its procurement documentation, where the level of detail demonstrated in completing the task and the assessment of the required workload form part of the evaluation of the most economically advantageous tender. LIKTA proposes making such assignments a binding reference standard throughout the entire duration of the contract.
In LIKTA’s view, procurement requirements should also include bidders’ financial indicators, such as liquidity ratios, turnover generated from relevant development projects, and mandatory state social insurance contributions. This would provide greater confidence that a company will be able to maintain the necessary team of specialists throughout the contract period and that it does not face significant insolvency risks. In other words, the risk of awarding contracts to bidders with insufficient in-house capacity that rely on a difficult-to-manage network of subcontractors should be reduced.
For smaller ICT system development and maintenance contracts, LIKTA believes that competition could be strengthened by transforming the existing Electronic Procurement System (EIS) e-catalogues into dynamic purchasing systems. Here too, regularly updated information about team capacity and available work assignments would be important. This would promote stronger competition than procurement based on narrowly specified lists of projects.
High-quality procurement of ICT services requires appropriate quality assessment, a proportionate allocation of risks between the contracting authority and the supplier, and clear, objectively verifiable acceptance criteria. Nobody remembers the e-service procurements that worked well, but everyone feels the consequences when information systems fail or provide an inadequate user experience.
Source: likta.lv
