IMPLEMENTATION OF GOVERNMENT E-PROCUREMENT: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THAILAND AND INDONESIAN PRACTICES

In respond to the demand of an open, fair, transparent, and efficient environment for procurement, many governments have incorporated the use of internet in their procurement systems with online procurement (e-procurement). Given the different policies and laws which have to be complied with, the practice of government e-procurement system varies from one country to another. Thus, experiences in running e-procurement will vary as well. The achievements and obstacles of one country's experience will be a constructive reference for other countries in establishing e-procurement system. In this regard, government e-procurement system practices in two Southeast Asia countries i.e., Thailand and Indonesia particularly in public works are consecutively presented and finally compared in this paper. The government of Thailand has applied Online Auctions (e-Auctions) as the national procurement practice since 2005 and performed the e-Auctions in two types: Reverse Auction and Sealed Bid Auction. Contrary to the common practice of e-procurement, the Thai government, with some rationales, runs the bid documents obtaining manually as well as qualification and technical documents submission and holding the e-Auctions at bidding office. Whereas Indonesian government runs Online Sealed Bid Bidding (e-Procurement) and most of the bidding stages are performed electronically except bid evaluation for both technical and financial. The advantages and drawbacks of these two e-procurement practices are discussed as well as improvements that have to be made for successful of e-procurement.