The risk of fraud is inherent to any organisation. Currently, we are being exposed to seemingly endless cases of fraud and corruption occurrences in the public sectors, many of which are related to government procurement of various levels of government, federal, state and local as well as statutory bodies and government-linked companies. Most of these occur due to the inefficient procurement department and the procurement process. Hence, everyone in the organisation should commit themselves to the best practice in procurement by seeking and adopting them to increase the level of accountability, integrity and transparency in government procurement.
Why Procurement Process?
From the audit point of view, other than competency, factors such as attitude and integrity also contribute to the negative perceptions due to human weaknesses. The National Audit Department (NAD) gives special attention to the government procurement management for a number of reasons:
First, the shortcomings on the management of government procurement should be curbed. In the eyes of the public, the shortcomings are constantly repeated as if the civil servants are not sensitive and aware of their responsibilities to manage the public money properly and prudently. If in the limited audit sample, those irregularities have been found, imagine the possibilities of how widespread in this phenomenon, and how difficult it is will change the negative perception of the public.
Government procedure is one component of good governance in the public service. Fostering a culture of excellence among those involved in procurement where flaws such as non-compliance and regulations and the weaknesses revealed by the audit are expected to be the lessons learnt to make continuous improvement. The question is whether they are willing to learn from the mistakes of others?