This article is an excerpt from The Art of Tendering: A Global Due Diligence Guide, which is available for purchase.
In its November 2017 report entitled Getting the right information to effectively manage public assets, New Zealand’s Auditor General found that local governments faced challenges in collecting proper information to manage local assets, including roadways, walkways, water infrastructure, playgrounds, and parks. The report noted the importance of access to asset management information to support proper future procurement planning, and found that there were gaps between asset management information systems and procurement planning systems:
Some of the five local authorities were doing “manual workarounds” to extract and transfer asset information between systems. Staff were aware of the risks and issues that could arise when data is extracted manually, such as errors that could cause inconsistent information to feed into different processes that use asset information.
The report underscored the importance of updating procurement planning technologies to help avoid the risk of inadequate access to planning information that, as the report noted, “could lead to poor decisions with longer-term negative effects, including asset renewal planning that is not sustainable or achievable.” As this report illustrates, the scope of audit reviews includes the assessment of whether government institutions are engaged in appropriate long-term planning to support their procurement operations.
