|
Due to climate change, disastrous events have repeated laid damages to public infrastructure and tested governments’ ability to react in a meaningful timing. In several occasions, government’s belated counter measures have triggered distrust among the public against government officials as well as politicians. It appears, at least from past experiences, governments in general are slow and inefficient in responding to unexpected events, and they certainly are no match to the competency from the private sector. As a general knowledge, one of major causes for governments’ sloth in action has been attributable to the government procurement process. The aim of this research work is to examine the relevant laws and mandates which set upon government agencies in dealing with government procurements for and of emergencies. Specifically, this study will review past government procurement cases, undertaken under the cause of “emergencies”, and examine the standard employed by agencies in determining whether a given case possesses the nature of an emergency. It will also conduct a nation-wide questionnaire survey and related interviews to verify whether the current laws and mandates relating to procurements for emergencies are sufficient with regards to efficiency. The major findings of this work include: 1. there exists grey area in recognizing a case of procurements in emergency from the standpoint of government agencies; 2. Current laws (i.e. Clause 22 and Clause 105) seem to present overlapping rules for procurement for emergencies; 3. the existing budgetary procedure creates the biggest bottleneck in expediting a procurement case in response to an emergent event; 4. there exists a common lack of incentive to actively seek out ways to facilitate a procurement case; most government agencies lack sufficient skilled personnel in handling government procurements for emergency.
|