Long Term Agreements (LTAs) are framework agreements maintained with one or more suppliers for a certain commodity, service, or group of them for a period of up to 3 years typically. The purpose of establishing Long Term Agreements (LTAs) includes among others:

• to ensure effectiveness and efficiency in the procurement process
• to reduce processing timelines within the boundaries of UNDP procurement rules and regulations
• limit repetitive tendering exercises for standardised equipment and services
• ensure the necessary quality standards are met, by including them under the agreements and therefore the LTAs guarantee quality assurance and quality control

UNDP/GPU maintains LTAs with several expert suppliers for a vast range of strategic and essential electoral materials typically required. The main focus of LTAs in the past has been to cover commonly procured items for manual registration, following past trends.

Materials requested are in most cases highly diverse, requiring consolidation and special packing/integration for later distribution. This typically involves complex logistics. Electoral related materials covered by LTAs include items such as ballot boxes and seals, voting booths, indelible ink, registration/polling kits, IT equipment, power supplies and freight forwarding services. Most of these goods are not normally available locally and therefore covered through global LTAs.

Recent needs assessments, mapping exercises, analysis on conducted procurement and feedback from field missions, show a trend towards higher technological solutions, e.g. using Optical Mark Reader (OMR) methodology or introducing comprehensive digital biometric voter registration solutions. The strategic focus for the immediate future is thus to increase the scope of procurement tools, such as LTAs/prequalification lists, etc. to include items of higher level of technology, higher production complexity and higher security requirements.

Another potential area of expansion for procurement tools and agreements is consultancy services in the field of elections, for example provision of support and training for domestic observers; training of political parties on voter registration and polling procedures, etc.; media support and monitoring services; and support to civic and voter education services. Nonetheless, tendering processes will continue to be routinely launched due to the different needs and individual character of each project complexity, volume, promoting local involvement, etc.