Frustrated that society has entered the 4.0 Industrial Revolution but contractors still receive bidding information the same way as 10 years ago, Mr. Hung and his colleagues embarked on digital transformation for this field by allowing launched DauThau.INFO - Software to exploit bidding information from the national bidding database, helping contractors proactively access bidding information, saving a lot of time and costs, and most of all , helping the government solve problems that the national procurement network cannot solve.
Nhấn VÀO ĐÂY để chuyển bài viết sang bản tin tiếng Việt
Telling the story of the birth of this special solution, Mr. Nguyen The Hung - CEO of Vietnam Open Source Development Joint Stock Company (VINADES) - said: Coming up with the idea of a tool to help perfect the What the government's public service system cannot provide to businesses comes to him completely randomly, stemming from his company's own needs.
In early 2018, because searching for bidding information on the government website was very inconvenient, requiring the use of Internet Explorer and the Windows operating system, it could not be used on phones or any browser/operating system. In addition, bidding packages cannot be classified according to business needs, public procurement portals often have errors, bidding information cannot be looked up... VINADES company's bidding department proposed to develop a software to support detection and search. Proactively seeking bidding packages can solve all of the above difficulties.
According to Mr. Hung, initially the company did not plan to do bidding projects because it was afraid of having relationships to get projects. However, as the development process progresses and the business grows larger, its capacity also increases, which means that the projects also grow larger (small projects are no longer suitable for the company because the company's scale is not suitable at this time). to do small projects). At this time, although the public customer group using the company's products and services is very confident, the procedures and ways of working must change according to the scale of the project: bidding must be done. The question is how to find bidding packages that the company is capable of doing without necessarily going in a relationship direction.
After researching a series of services providing bidding information on the market, his company's bidding department said there was no service that met the requirements. Specifically: the public procurement information portal is very difficult to search, and does not have the function of screening and sending bidding information via email; Some places (including bidding newspapers) only provide information in PDF and Excel file formats, which requires a lot of effort to get it back, which is not suitable for a small scale of human resources like your company.
The company's procurement department then asked the question: "Why don't we write software to do this?" And this idea was quickly approved by the company's board of directors. "Our software was born from that proposal," Mr. Hung said.
After writing the software, data poured in regularly, the software development team discovered that the number of bidding packages in Vietnam was too large, with all fields, there was nothing outside that had a need that on the market. There is no public procurement market. In addition, some businesses also offer to use the same software for a reasonable fee. Seeing that it was reasonable, the company's leadership decided to bring the software into business.
Regarding the price for the software, Mr. Hung recalled that at that time he asked a number of business CEOs: "How much is the fee that companies can accept?" One unit suggested: "Because the software works 24/7. 24 hours, so calculating the equivalent of an employee with a salary of 8 million a month is a bit... difficult. Now let's say a business hunts for tenders, the software works once a day (if a tender is found, it will send it to email, otherwise it won't), if the cost of sending a report via email is equivalent to 1 bowl of pho 30,000 VND as follows: So one year you will have to pay 365 bowls of pho. Round calculation is 10 million VND. Do you feel OK?"
And so DauThau.INFO Software is valued at 10 million VND/year. "The price is equivalent to a bowl of pho every day," Mr. Hung affirmed.
"We just kept doing it, but we didn't expect to follow the path of open data exploitation that the World Bank recommended for Vietnam."
Mr. Hung said that initially, he and the company's team simply used software to solve the needs of their business; It wasn't until he attended a conference organized by the World Bank that he learned that the way DauThau.INFO software operates and exploits public government data is the way the World Bank world) recommended by the Vietnamese government.
In the "Report on Assessment of Readiness Level on Digital Government and Open Data in Vietnam" conducted by the Government Office and World Bank Vietnam in February 2019 and presented at the conference, World Bank emphasized: " Open data is the driving force for SMEs and start-ups to participate in Vietnam's digital economy." The way businesses create value from open government data is to make that data more valuable to businesses and society, creating new analytical reports and new values that serve the needs of businesses and society. production and business activities of the enterprise.
And thanks to the use of publicly available data, DauThau.INFO has helped solve many problems that the national bidding network has not been able to solve for a long time, such as how to help contractors access main contractor information. via email, how to use modern browsers to look up bidding information on any device from computer, tablet, phone... without using Internet Explorer and operating system Microsoft Windows
Because of the above outstanding features, after 2 years of launch, DauThau.INFO has been used by more than 20 thousand businesses. Currently, the software is oriented to become a technology Start-up independent of VINADES company.
Screenshot of DauThau.INFO software
Mr. Hung also revealed that, not only does it help contractors access notices, Start-up DauThau.INFO has initially successfully researched allowing contractors to download bidding documents on any modern browser. (FireFox, Opera, Google Chrome, Edge...) without depending on Internet Explorer browser and Windows operating system like on the national bidding network. Something that even the national bidding network has not been able to solve for the past 10 years.
Confidence in direction
When asked about whether he is afraid of Start-up failure when the national bidding network may later add features that DauThau.INFO software has done. Mr. Hung said: "The government needs to solve macro issues related to market regulation and establishing game rules. It does not need and should not do things that start-ups and private enterprises can solve." Okay".
“It is important that the government creates fair playing rules as well as mechanisms to help promote innovative startups like what DauThau.INFO is doing and the World Bank recommends. What businesses can do, the government should let businesses do, this will help take advantage of social resources and creativity of businesses. The government encourages the start-up nation, I believe this is true, and I believe the government will do the right thing," Mr. Hung affirmed.
The dream of the government publishing public bidding data as open data (opendata)
When asked what suggestions he had for the government when implementing the DauThau.INFO Start-up project, Mr. Hung recalled that he and many experts on open source software and open data in the Self-Defense Software Club Vietnam Open Source (VFOSSA) proposed that the government regulate open data copyright licensing for public data such as data on the national bidding network. This is considered to help promote creative startups and create more value for society from the government's "neglected" data source.
After many recommendations, recently, Decree 47/2020/ND-CP regulating digital data management, connection and sharing activities of state agencies was issued with a very important part regulating about open government data. Thinking that this means there is an extremely important legal corridor, Mr. Hung still emphasized that bringing regulations into life is always an obstacle that has never been easy and noted that the government will continue to Much work lies ahead if we want to promote innovative entrepreneurship through open data.
Mr. Nguyen The Hung - Photo provided by the character.
Always spirited for the community
As an open source software enterprise, for more than 10 years, VINADES company has distributed the NukeViet software suite for free to hundreds of web design companies, helping tens of thousands of organizations and individuals to own it. Website with Vietnamese technology. Until now, NukeViet open source software developed by VINADES company is still the only open source web software product on the market that is Vietnamese.
When starting up with DauThau.INFO, Mr. Hung's group still continued with the spirit of community service. That's why DauThau.INFO, in addition to 8 software packages sold to large businesses in all fields and industries both domestically and internationally, still makes a separate software package called VIEWEB for small & micro businesses, helps these businesses confidently participate in bidding with a fee of only a few thousand VND per day (1.6 million VND/year). Up to now, the VIEWEB package of DauThau.INFO software has been given away for free permanently to 18 thousand small and micro businesses, equivalent to nearly 30 billion VND/year. To support businesses in fighting the COVID-19 epidemic, Mr. Hung said DauThau.INFO is continuing to support up to 40% of costs (permanent) for small and micro companies registering to use the software package. This is in January 45, 2020.
When does contract negotiation fail?