Preliminary Analysis: The Public Procurement Monitoring System of Montenegro

Abstract

Montenegro is currently in the process of modernizing and restructuring its public procurement system, not only with a view to bringing its procurement system in line with international best practices and complete its accession requirements to enter the EU, but also to constructing more efficient and competitive public procurement, that will enable optimization of results. In order to guarantee that significant improvements are built into the procurement system, the Government of Montenegro has taken several steps to tackle its shortcomings, namely by devising strategies for the development of the procurement system along with action plans that establish specific measures and goals and respective timeframes for completion and tracking the implementation of such measures. The assessments conducted by external entities to the Government of Montenegro have shown that such strategies have been productive in addressing issues in the public procurement system of Montenegro and showcase a steady evolution towards better procurement practices. The analyses introduced by this methodology will most definitely concentrate on performance compliance indicators. These will allow for a more quantitative-based approach to monitoring of the public procurement practices in Montenegro, introducing a less formal concept of monitoring, which is currently restricted to legal and regulatory compliance and emphasizes formal and administrative aspects of procurement. Analyzing and improving the system of procurement is entirely dependent on data available and the analysis of the data for gathering business intelligence and increase productivity of all entities in the system. To this end, guidelines and key performance indicators (KPIs) on how to improve the monitoring, auditing and reporting mechanisms will be introduced. This analysis will also include the benchmarking of the 2015 annual report by the PPA, where monitoring will be assessed in terms of compliance with proposed targets and changes verified up to this point.