Democratic governance is one of the core mandates of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). This article describes initiatives of the UNDP’s Bureau of Management (BoM) Procurement Support Office (PSO) to support UNDP Country Offices in procurement for electoral cycle projects.

The UNDP Procurement Support Office (PSO/BoM)¹ provides procurement advisory guidance and support to UNDP Country Offices through its operational office in Copenhagen, Denmark. UNDP is the UN’s global development network, which advocates for change and connects countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life. UNDP is on the ground in 166 countries, working with them on their own solutions to global and national development challenges.

One of UNDP’s key practice areas is to foster democratic governance. One way the organization does this is by working through its Country Offices with its national counterparts such as Electoral Management Bodies (EMBs) on electoral cycle support projects. Electoral cycle support projects are funded by various country and international donors. As the European Commission (EC) is a major donor, a partnership was established between UNDP and the EC in 2004. Activities under this partnership are operationally coordinated through the Joint EC-UNDP Task Force (JTF)² on Electoral Assistance, with PSO/BoM a member of the Task Force.

One of the challenges with electoral projects stems from their often abrupt and temporary operational nature. This is especially true for countries undergoing democratic transitions. Often, EMBs are fully staffed and resourced only just prior to the commencement of elections activities. EMBs invariably experience substantial delays in actions and decisions due to several reasons, some local. As a result, electoral procurement is often last minute and conducted in much less time than what is desirable or recommended by international procurement norms.

Because of such realities, UNDP Country Offices involved in electoral support projects find it difficult to sustain a standing capacity in anticipation of the formal launch of the election process. As such, UNDP can prepare for the project, including the recruitment of experts and the onset of procurement activities, only after the formal announcement of an election is made and a financial agreement with UNDP is signed off on. It is imperative therefore that when procurement staff is deployed, a body of knowledge and toolkits are readily available for their immediate reference and use.

In recognition of these difficulties, PSO/BoM has launched several initiatives to facilitate rapid support for UNDP Country Offices through electoral advisory and direct procurement functions carried out by its Global Procurement Unit in Copenhagen³. The advisory function offers procurement advice to Country Offices and works closely with the JTF in project formulation leading up to project development and budgeting to raise donor financing based on the findings and recommendations of the UN needs assessment. It also focuses on knowledge management and capacity development activities in electoral procurement support with development partners. The direct support function provides operational procurement services to Country Offices and develops tools and strategies to effectively deliver these procurement services. The two functions work complementarily and closely together to ensure a seamless and continuous stream of support provided to Country Offices.

PSO/BoM has launched a Strategic Sourcing Project which will formulate sourcing strategies tailored to each of UNDP’s four practice areas: poverty reduction, democratic governance, crisis prevention and recovery and energy and environment. For electoral cycle support under democratic governance, this includes prioritization and validation of electoral procurement requirements that are identified by a focus group of all interested stakeholders from donors, programme staff, end-users and concerned procurement staff through a needs assessment. The strategy may result in a combination of several solutions for efficient sourcing. Apart from the use of traditional Long Term Agreements (LTAs), it may introduce other possible sourcing options, including the mobilization of resources from other agencies, NGOs or other international organizations or in some cases partnering with them. Also, the sourcing strategy may address a mixture of solutions at a local, regional or global level.

Where local supply sources are limited in supplying election materials such as ballot boxes, indelible ink and polling kits, PSO/BoM has already established LTAs through a competitive process, with ceiling amounts approved by UNDP’s contracts review committee. With these LTAs, PSO/BoM is able to deliver large quantities of electoral goods of assured quality under exceptional circumstances within four to six weeks from requisition through proper management of the supply chain and relationship with known and reliable suppliers.

Similarly, PSO/BoM has pre-qualified experienced suppliers for digital biometric voter registration kits. Pre-qualification was used as often the requirements for each situation are vastly different and hence not suitable for use of an LTA. Pre-qualified suppliers are then asked to submit bids in a competitive process and following evaluation, the three lowest priced and technically compliant bidders are invited to attend the Site Validation Test (SVT) in-country. The SVT not only proves the proper functioning of the kits in the actual operational environment by local operators of EMB but also allows the political community to witness and accept the integrity of the process to be implemented for the future voter registration.

The SVT was used successfully in the recent case for Zambia in early 2010. PSO/BoM is currently working on having LTAs in place for security printing of ballot papers and studying what procurement can be done regionally or locally to diversify supply sources.

As part of the JTF, PSO/BoM has worked with development partners such as ACE⁴ and International IDEA⁵ in areas of capacity development. Such partnerships have been translated into a number of tangible results including the preparation of an Operational Paper which focuses on procurement for ICT solutions by incorporating experience and lessons learned from actual cases such as for the recent Zambia case. Meanwhile, PSO/BoM has also contributed to the JTF in developing an e-learning module on electoral procurement for UNDP Country Offices and EC Delegation. This can be viewed at www.elearning-ec-undp-electoralassistance.org/.

This said, future initiatives are planned to include:

• Placing roving procurement officers based in Copenhagen or the UNDP Regional Service Centres, who can be expeditiously fielded for periods of between three to six months to Country Offices in need;
• Annual workshops on electoral procurement for UNDP Country Offices that are involved in electoral projects;
• Fast-track procedures for urgent electoral procurement;
• Pro-active missions from PSO/BoM to target UNDP Country Offices to be involved from the beginning of elections projects.

Years of experience with electoral cycle support have shown that as UNDP Country Offices start and close down UNDP election projects, it remains the responsibility of PSO/BoM and democratic governance practice advisers to provide integral guidance and support to Country Offices to deliver on their projects by collecting, maintaining, updating and making available the body of knowledge, best practices and toolkits. This is the challenge of and objective for UNDP in providing electoral procurement support.

1. Procurement Support Office is a unit of the Bureau of Management in UNDP. Its Directorate is headquartered in New York, providing leadership in policy making and external relations. Its operational base is in Copenhagen, Denmark.
2. www.ec-undp-electoralassistance.org
3. Under the new UNDP Global Programme for Electoral Cycle Support (GPECS), one procurement adviser for electoral support will be based in Copenhagen to provide overall leadership and guidance in the area and one procurement advisor for electoral support will be based in Johannesburg in line with UNDP’s practice areas and policy of regionalization which locates support close to programme activities.
4. ACE was established in 1998 as the ACE (Administration and Cost of Elections) Project by (International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA), International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) and United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA). http://aceproject.org/
5. International IDEA (International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance) is an intergovernmental organization that supports sustainable democracy worldwide. http://www.idea.int/

The views expressed in this work do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations Development Programme, its Executive Board or its Member States. For further information on UNDP Bureau of Management (BoM) Procurement Support Office (PSO) activities in electoral procurement please contact below.

United Nations Development Programme

Contact:
Victor Margall, Procurement Analyst
victor.margall@undp.org