Sunshine State hosts Korean purchasing officials
Officials from the Florida Department of Management Services (DMS) recently welcomed a government procurement delegation from the Republic of South Korea. Teams from the two governments shared ideas about public procurement processes and technology. They also compared the respective governments’ purchasing policies and practices.
The delegation included representatives from South Korea’s ministries of Public Administration and Security, Strategy and Finance, and Knowledge Economy, and from the Public Procurement Service of Korea (PPS), which is Korea’s central procurement agency. Previous representatives of the PPS visited DMS in November 2011, and shared an overview of the PPS with DMS staff. The PPS is similar in its operations to the U.S. General Services Administration.
DMS staff demonstrated Florida’s eProcurement system, MyFloridaMarketPlace, for the delegates, and the state’s Information Technology procurement process. Byeong Chul Im of the PPS will be staying on with the Florida DMS for several months to learn about performance-based contracting for the procurement of services, in addition to overall government contracting. Im is currently at Florida State University studying under a Korean government employee development program, and will focus his graduate research on procurement while at DMS starting this December.
The DMS Division of State Purchasing recently initiated its Procurement Process Improvement Project (PPIP), a multi-phase, cross-functional and collaborative effort to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of Florida’s State Purchasing Division based on a seven-stage sourcing methodology. The primary goal of the PPIP is to standardize the state government procurement process to create efficiencies and foster better understanding of how Florida’s government buys goods and services. State Term Contracts and State Purchasing Agreements awarded by the Division of State Purchasing account for more than $1 billion in purchases annually.
”The process of procurement is an enormous responsibility,” said DMS Agency Secretary Craig Nichols. “Sharing our successes and best practices is just as important as exploring the successes and best practices of our international counterparts.”
