Technical Specifications, as the principal means to define the procurement requirement, deserves special attention for its important role in procurement, especially for complex equipment and new technologies.

In short, the specification is the “heart” of the procurement transaction as it:

• Defines client (beneficiary) needs and requirements
• Tells the procurement agent (if applicable) what to procure for the client
• Tells the potential suppliers the supply requirements
• Establishes the quality standard (benchmarks) against which bid evaluation, inspection, tests and quality checks are made

Specifications can be categorised as Functional, Performance, or Technical. It is common though to use the term “Technical Specifications” to refer to specifications in general. Often the three types are typically combined to define the requirement with the necessary level of details to ensure full understanding and coordination among parties.

Specifications in the case of goods should involve most importantly all technical/physical details, complemented as necessary by functional and performance specifications, defining the purpose and capacities of the item. It is important to not limit specifications for goods to only physical details, especially when procuring equipment, new technologies and complex systems. In addition, specifications should be stated in a generic manner, avoiding the use of brand or trade names as far as possible.

In the case of services, requests are mainly defined based on functional and performance criteria, being the principal specifications to use for services. For example, requests for services should provide background and objectives, the terms of reference (ToR) or Statement of Works required (SoW); quality standards; the qualifications and experience of consultants required; time period; deliverables/output; milestones and reporting; provisions for monitoring and evaluation, etc.

Specifications, wherever possible should use internationally accepted Standards to provide a recognized and measurable reference for compliance, remove uncertainty and provide a clear benchmark the suppliers should meet. A typical use of standards is in relation to quality. Quality refers to the perception of the degree to which the product or service meets the customer’s expectations. It actually has no specific meaning unless related to a specific function and/or object, as quality is a perceptual, conditional and somewhat subjective attribute. Therefore, using established and specific standards helps in clarifying what is the exact level of quality requested.

In UNDP electoral procurement activities where typically there is an international basket fund electoral assistance project managed by UNDP, (UNDP conducting the procurement under UNDP procurement procedures, in support to an EMB), the technical specifications should be developed at the earliest stage possible within the project and jointly by UNDP and the EMB. It is absolutely necessary in this context that the final technical specifications are agreed and signed off by the EMB before the procurement request is issued to the suppliers.

This approach ensures involvement, agreement and adoption of the solution by the beneficiary – the EMB, which is part of the process.

The signed-off technical specifications form the backbone from which the evaluation criteria are established. Attempting to draw up such evaluation criteria in the absence of a pre-established, signed-off, technical specification can be troublesome. For example, evaluators might disagree on what criteria should be used and what is each one’s relative importance. Absence of clear and agreed specifications will prevent development of proper offers from suppliers and complicate evaluation, the supplier selection phase and after-delivery stages. The following points illustrate this:

• Once the physical product is received, different members of the EMB may have had different interpretations of what the product will feature. An adequately and detailed signed-off specification avoids such situation
• These specifications must conform to the requirements and criteria of the electoral law. Without drawing up such specifications it is difficult to assess what these mandatory criteria are, as well as assess, the degree to which each offering conforms to these criteria
• It follows that if the base criteria that must be met by each supplier are not known then it will be difficult to assess if a supplier actually meets these mandatory criteria in a quantifiable fashion. In the absence of such specifications, the selection process may degenerate into decisions driven by softer issues (for example, which product “looks” smarter or well-polished) instead of which product meets (or best serves) the basic mandatory criteria dictated by the electoral law and best practise
• The criteria embodied within the specifications can also serve to minimize disagreements that may arise within the evaluation team members regarding the evaluation result/decision of an offer

It is important to factor into the discussions with stakeholders involved the difficulties that will arise if there are attempts to change the specifications after the document has been published and sent to suppliers. Often, ill-prepared technical specifications only come to light when potential suppliers themselves raise concerns and point out some inconsistencies, which of course is only possible after they have received the document. In this case, potential contractors (in this case UNDP) are under obligation to answer queries from suppliers and send copies of both the query and its response to all receivers of the tender documentation. This may require allocating additional time for suppliers to return bids, affecting the overall timeline for the project, which may not be allowable under the legal framework.

In addition, where no efforts have been made towards appropriate definition of specifications, standardisation of practices and early establishment of criteria in the process, procurement has faced risky situations of vendor lock, where the vendor may influence to define the specifications, limiting competition and eventually developing a monopoly type situation.

There are additional advantages when a technical specifications document is drawn up and it forms an integral part of the procurement process and order placement. For example, ideally it should be possible to fully test a product’s conformance before sign-off and deployment. In practise however this is not always feasible.

For example, the specifications for a biometric voter registration kit may include the criteria of registering at least 10,000 voters, as well as detecting, via fingerprints (or a fused algorithm of fingerprints and facial recognition) any attempt to register a person more than once on the same kit. Therefore, we should then register 10,000 different people as voters while occasionally testing the duplicate voter registration functionality. In reality, however, a more reduced number of mock voters are registered during the test sessions and based on that functionalities are tested.

Following this example, in case that during implementation kits are discovered not to adhere to the specifications despite tests were considered passed, supplier selected and offered equipment is signed-off for conformity, then the purchaser has the recourse to request the supplier to meet the established specifications as per solicitation documents. Solicitation documents typically form an integral part of the contract, and therefore they become legally binding once signatures are stamped as contract being accepted by both parties.