The Public Procurement Service will officially open the ‘Next Generation National Market’ on January 6, 2025, after approximately three years of development. In preparation for this opening, all procurement-related services, including the existing National Market system, will be temporarily suspended from December 31, 2024 to 9:00 a.m. on January 6, 2025. This applies to all computer systems provided by the Public Procurement Service, including the National Market, ‘Comprehensive Shopping Mall’, ‘e-Order Support’, and ‘On-Tong Procurement’.
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▲[Korean Today] The main screen of the National Marketplace website with a notice of service suspension © Reporter Byun A-rong |
Due to this service interruption, public institutions and procurement companies cannot perform procurement requests, bids, contracts, payments, and even bill payment via virtual accounts. Accordingly, the industry is focusing on organizing new year business plans and internal operation inspections with procurement-related work suspended from the beginning of the year. In particular, major construction companies are using this interruption period to reorganize their 2025 business goals and prepare to adapt to the next-generation national market. An official from Construction Company A said, “In the 20 years I have worked at the Public Procurement Service, this is the first time in a year that there has been no bid opening work after the opening ceremony,” adding that this situation is very unusual.
The Public Procurement Service plans to significantly improve procurement services for approximately 70,000 demand organizations and 670,000 procurement companies through this next-generation system. This system has strengthened security by introducing a new authentication method, while upgrading the overall platform environment to take user convenience into consideration.
In particular, the next-generation system will abolish the existing institutional authentication method and switch to an individual-based authentication method, and apply a triple authentication system. This will contribute to strengthening the protection of user information, but some companies are complaining that the authentication process has become more complicated. Small and medium-sized companies have also pointed out that it has become difficult to process existing work through bidding agents.
This next-generation system began development in 2021 and was completed in about three years. It was originally scheduled to open in July 2024, but the opening schedule was delayed by about five months due to system compatibility issues between demand agencies and procurement companies and some errors. The Public Procurement Service plans to provide official services starting in March after a two-month trial period to stabilize the system. At the same time, the existing national procurement system will be completely abolished.
Procurement companies and demand agencies are expressing concerns about initial confusion, although they expect the new system to increase efficiency and transparency in procurement work. In particular, small and medium-sized enterprises are likely to experience inconvenience due to changes in certification procedures, and it seems that it will take time to adapt to changes in existing work methods.
The industry is also viewing the major bid opening schedule of the Korea Land and Housing Corporation (LH) scheduled for January 21 as the first test bed for the next-generation national market. The ‘Goyang Changneung Public Housing District Construction Project 2nd Section (estimated price: 113.9 billion won)’ and the ‘Yongin Eonnam Public-Supported Private Rental Housing Supply Promotion District Construction Project (estimated price: 69.9 billion won)’, which will be opened on this day, are both being conducted in the form of a large-scale comprehensive review and bidding system, and major construction companies in the industry are expected to participate. An official from Construction Company B said, “This bid opening will be an important opportunity to assess the stability of the next-generation system,” and expressed expectations, saying that although there may be initial errors, they are confident in the Public Procurement Service’s improvement efforts.
The Public Procurement Service plans to distribute user education and support manuals for the early settlement of the next-generation national market and operate a ‘next-generation national market customer response team’ to minimize inconvenience to users. In addition, it plans to continue the process of continuous monitoring and feedback collection to reduce confusion caused by the introduction of the new system.
The introduction of this next-generation national procurement system is an important turning point that will lead to innovation in the public procurement system of the Republic of Korea, and securing stable operation and trust from the industry will be future tasks.
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