Castellán

What is Electronic Opening?

 

One of the innovative aspects included in the reform of the national public procurement system, carried out in November 2011 with the enactment of Law 18,834 (specifically in its articles 36 and 39, which were later incorporated respectively as articles 63 and 65 of the TOCAF), was this possibility of submission and opening of bids in state procurement procedures through electronic means, which the State Purchasing and Contracting Agency (ACCE) has announced as \"Electronic Opening\" (APEL).

Regulation

The aforementioned legal provisions, which only foresaw this mechanism as a possible modality for the submission and opening of bids, were initially regulated by Decree 275/013, through which various operational aspects of the procedure for submission, reception, opening, and electronic access of bids were detailed.

Five years later, and having noticed the need to modify certain issues and regulate others, following the first experiences of Electronic Opening, the aforementioned Decree was repealed by Decree 142/018, published in the Official Gazette on May 18, 2018.

Which agencies are required to use this modality?

Given the advantages obtained with the implementation of Electronic Opening, through this new regulatory norm - specifically, in its article 2 - the mechanism was made mandatory for Budget Items 02 to 15 of the National Budget, that is, the Presidency of the Republic and the Ministries, which together make up the Central Administration.

In compliance with the mandate of article 16 of the Decree, on June 13, 2018, the Honorary Board of Directors of ACCE issued Resolution No. 67/2018, through which the following progressive implementation schedule of Electronic Opening by the obligated agencies was established:

 

Starting from September 10, 2018: Presidency of the Republic, Ministry of Education and Culture, Ministry of Public Health, Ministry of Labor and Social Security, and Ministry of Social Development.

 

Starting from October 16, 2018: Ministry of the Interior, Ministry of Economy and Finance, and Ministry of Tourism.

 

Starting from November 19, 2018: Ministry of National Defense, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries, Ministry of Industry, Energy and Mining, Ministry of Transportation and Public Works, and Ministry of Housing, Territorial Planning and Environment.

 

For what types of procurement procedures is Electronic Opening mandatory?

According to the provisions of article 2 of Decree 142/018, the obligation to use the Electronic Opening modality extends, for the aforementioned Budget Items, to all competitive procurement procedures, namely:

- Public Bidding.

- Abbreviated Bidding.

- Framework Agreements (Decree 367/018 already provides for mandatory Electronic Opening).

- Auctions or reverse auctions.

- Competitive non-bidding procedures (article 33, literal C, of the TOCAF).

 

The only procurement procedures that, despite being competitive, are not subject to the mandatory use of Electronic Opening are those created under article 37 of the TOCAF, related to goods or services that cannot be contracted through any other procedure already provided for in the regulations. Some examples of these special procedures, in which Electronic Opening is not mandatory, are the acquisition of food (Decree 129/003); financing contracting by UTE (Decree 194/006); acquisition of medicines, hospital supplies, and related items (Decrees 147/009 and 340/012) and contracting of transportation services for personnel, material, equipment, and other work implements through vehicles with drivers by OSE (OSE Board Resolution No. 895/2017).
 

Main practical aspects of the Electronic Opening mechanism

 

- The electronic platform through which all state agencies that implement Electronic Opening must use is centralized on the State Purchasing and Contracting website.

- Bids must be entered into this electronic platform by each bidder, after authenticating with their corresponding username and password for their registration in the Unique State Suppliers Registry (RUPE) and until the date and time set for their opening.

- The documentation that makes up the bid must be entered in the formats indicated in the Special Conditions Document of the procedure in question, without passwords or locks for printing or copying. Documents whose originals only exist in paper format (for example, certificates) must be loaded digitized into the electronic platform, and the originals must be exhibited if the bidder is awarded the contract.

- Documentation containing confidential information must be entered with an express indication of such quality and in a separate file, without prejudice to the bidder's obligation to include a summary of the confidential information in the public part of their bid.

- Guarantees (for example, bid maintenance) and samples of the offered products must be delivered to the contracting agency in the manner indicated in the Special Conditions Document.

- The bids entered are not accessible to the other bidders or to the contracting agency until the date and time set for their opening, allowing each bidder, until that moment, to modify or even delete their bid.

- At the time of the opening, the electronic platform does not allow the entry of more bids and automatically generates the Opening Minutes, which are also automatically sent to all bidders at their respective electronic addresses registered in RUPE. The Minutes are also available to all bidders on the electronic platform.

- From the opening onwards, the bids are visible to all bidders, to the contracting agency, as well as to the Court of Auditors.

 

Advantages of Electronic Opening

Despite the difficulties inherent in any process of innovation and transformation, there are several advantages that the Electronic Opening mechanism offers to suppliers:

- Savings in printing, photocopying, binding, and transportation costs of bids, which, depending on the complexity of the object of the procurement, sometimes result in significant volumes of documentation.

- Time and human resources savings, by dispensing with a face-to-face bid submission and opening stage.

- Greater speed in processing procedures, as the contracting agency does not have to digitize the bids, as it already receives them in electronic format. This, in turn, allows simultaneous review by the members of the Advisory Bidding Committee or Technical Committee involved in the procurement procedure.

- Greater transparency, as the content of each bid is available for consultation by the other bidders, allowing more effective control of its evaluation by the contracting agency.

 

Dr. Juan Pablo Díaz

 

Montevideo, November 14, 2018