About the Procurement Observatory
Better procurement practices can bring benefits in terms of greater competition, transparency and fairness along with reduction in corruption and costs. To promote these objectives, the procurement observatory was established in July 2013 with active support from the World Bank Group. The observatory provides a platform to observe procurement processes and advocate better practices by initiating dialogue among relevant stakeholders. It pursues qualitative and quantitative analysis of the procurement processes across various Indian states and shares it with government officers and citizens through this portal, blogs, tweets, newsletters, workshops and training sessions. By observing procurement process and advocating better procurement practices, it aims to encourage significant savings and bring in efficiency.
What do we do?
The observatory was initially supported by funding from the World bank but has since moved on to a self-funded engagement model wherein it provides consultancy, capacity building and training services to various public and private organizations.
Consulting: We have been engaged by various agencies such as the World Bank Group, Indian Army, U P Power Corporation Ltd., etc to improve their existing procurement process. Through these assignments we have helped our clients in either redesigning their entire procurement process or execute it better by providing support on supplier evaluation or improving the bid documents. The consulting assignments are governed by IIM Lucknow consulting guidelines.
Training: We offer procurement training programs to the public and private sectors on a regular basis. We have signed an MoU with the World Bank Group to bring in their technical expertise in our training programs. These training programs are either open program at IIM Lucknow or tailor made for a particular organization delivered at its preferred location.
Advocacy and Advisory: The observatory continuously engages in the advocacy and advisory roles on various topics such as competition, fairness, transparency and integrity, policy formulation, monitoring and implementation. These assignments are small duration engagements carried out without any charges. In the past, we have helped Uttar Pradesh State Planning Institute in developing and delivering training programs, Urban Transport Department Government of Uttar Pradesh in preparing tender documents and contributed in preparing goods procurement policy for the state of Uttar Pradesh.
Prof. Amit Agrahari is a faculty of information systems at IIM Lucknow. He is a fellow of XLRI, Jamshedpur and pursued his graduation in statistics. Before joining IIM Lucknow, he worked with Infosys Technologies Ltd., where he was leading research on process innovation and optimization. (IIM Lucknow PageLinkedIn Profile)
Prof. Samir K Srivastava is a faculty of operations management at IIM Lucknow. He is a fellow of Indian Institute of Management Lucknow (IIML) and earned his graduate degree in Electrical Engineering from Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University. He also holds an M.B.A. in Finance. He worked for more than two decades in various positions in industry (AV Birla Group) in technical as well as management roles before plunging back full-time in academics. (IIM Lucknow Page LinkedIn Profile)
Contact us
In case you would like to visit the observatory, participate in workshop or collaborate with us, please feel free to talk to us.
Procurement Observatory for the State of Uttar Pradesh
Indian Institute of Management, Prabandh Nagar, Off Sitpur Road, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India
05222736631/ 05222736667
amit at iiml.ac.in / Samir at iiml.ac.in
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