Procurement council works on solutions

by Ken Quintanilla

Guam - The Guam Procurement Advisory Council only convened this month, but discussion may be underway to improve the island's procurement process but with limited time and the sources, there may be some challenges with doing so.

How are we going to tackle procurement locally? With our already limited funding, where are we going to get the money and manpower to carry out these mandates? These are just some of the questions raised during today's meeting at Adelup.

Chairman John Unpingco says questions like these were expected and only further showed the controversy that shores around the procurement process, saying, "It's important to have this council because we want to have in the end, we want to have a procurement code that works for all departments."

He hopes to have one system in place as several government entities such as the Department of Education and the Guam Memorial Hospital have their own procurement code which had disastrous results such as protests. And although PAC member and Public Works director Joanne Brown believes the Council is well intended, carrying out its intentions is easier said than done.  

Said Brown, "Right now we have over the years with all types of legislation that has been put into place with regards to procurement and this is a pretty big project to undertake; but to continue to mandate us to do things without the resources and expect delivery of a product, I think that's very challenging."

It was noted that there is no money in the PAC Support Fund but about $3,000 in the General Services Agency Surplus Property Fund. And while they try to overcome their challenges, assistance may be coming its way as the University of Guam's graduate studies sponsored programs and research was recently awarded a department of interior office of insular affairs grant to assist the government in conducting a comprehensive assessment of the procurement system.

Project director Attorney Vanessa Ji said, "I believe that government spending is approximately 20% of our GDP, so we got [sic] to be sure that we're doing it right and there's always room for improvement when we're talking about the taxpayers." She expects to have the objective assessment phase completed by mid-June, which will show specifically where improvement is needed.

The Council meanwhile agreed to request the Guam Legislature to place a moratorium on current and future bills relative to the procurement process until they get up to speed and figure out the best solutions.