Hello everyone. Welcome back for global public procurement. Today, we are going to talk about US government procurement. When I say US government, what I meant by that US federal government public procurement market. Before we get into the main session today, the concept of doing business in the federal, or state, or any type of public procurement, it is not easy, it's very demanding. It is actually a daunting task to get prepare, take all the step necessary to participate in the market. It's a very difficult task, there's no doubt about that. However, as I said earlier last session, there is obviously a lot of benefit, there is no commercial benefit of learning all the thing, preparing all the information, what you have to submit it. Then even going through very tedious steps of registration for DUNS number, CAGE number, all the validation steps. The reason we're doing that, because the benefit is there. Also we are hearing so many success story for very young entrepreneur getting into public procurement market, learned how to do business step-by-step, and then build small contract, one at a time, and eventually getting very big contract. Last two session has been pre-try concept, because especially last session we were talk about rules and regulation, very boring stuff. Especially with the Buy American Act, Trade Agreement Act, and some of the Berry Amendment. These leader framework, nobody really in the field comfortable going through it because we are not a lawyer, but we are the commercial operator. However, the learning about all this information, the rules and regulation, is very important because it is part of your job. One thing I do have to remind you is the all principle of the public procurement. What did I said earlier? [inaudible] basically, the source of funding, and rules and regulation, and who is going to be beneficiary of the Public Procurement Act? Therefore, we are in a very different marketplace, not like commercial market. We are in the public procurement market. The way we operate, the way we communicate with our contracting authority, those are the government, that's what I'm referring to, all these actions, and then the follow-up procedure must be very careful. Because sometimes if you go over a sudden cross line, getting into improper business relationship, creating conflict of interest, you are going to be a company or the person that basically subject of department, or you are not going to be included for public procurement anymore. In this day, one other thing that we have to take into consideration is that, when the company A tried to work with the US federal government and somehow do not delivery your promise, or walk away from your contract, or submit information that is not true, that mean that you discard information, not a 100 percent, or you did omission, or actually you made a false statement. When you're getting into this type of action, and then you penalized by what you're doing, and sanction by the [inaudible] authority, with one agent, say US federal government, these information now start to share among other international organizations such as United Nations. Even with the multilateral development bank such as Asian Development Bank, African Development Bank, they are all sharing information about the supplier, your validation, and your performance sometimes. I'm not saying 100 percent of these information, but they have a mechanism to share that information. When we are in the public procurement marketplace, we got to have a very different mindset and we must have a different business paradigm than being in commercial activity. In the commercial activity, basically a two-party, a buyer and seller, they come to a certain arrangement and then offer made, and the counter-offer, and offer accepted. That's the end of story. But federal or state, or any public procurement business including multilateral development bank or World Bank business where the bank allows loan or providing loan to recipient country like non-developed country. So they're using that money to develop their infrastructure, building schools and hospitals, something like that. All these public procurement markets, they have very different rules and regulations. Therefore, we have to follow the rules and regulations. It is not a simple act of making offer, a counter-offer, acceptance and then business deal is done, and the contract signed, it's not like that. Before you make an offer, you have to make sure the offer we are going to make, and comply with all the rules and regulation of the contracting authority, whether it is US Federal Government, or United Nations, or any other government agency, UK or India or any other. Your proposal, whether it's a technical proposal or pricing proposal, must comply with the rules and regulation of the issuing, the contracting authority. Then you have to submit a paper in your offer with all true and the fact-based statements. When you submit the government contract proposal, when you sign on behalf of your company as the Executive or the Director, any capacity, you are actually telling the government everything, "What I write in this paper purport is true," and then, "I am making commitment on behalf of our organization that we are going to deliver X, Y, Z on whatever price you are willing to do.". Also, after you've made such offer to the contracting authority, that means when you are submitting your proposal, it is automatic admission that you are going to comply with the terms and conditions you did not mention in your offer letter. For example, if you are submitting any proposal to United Nations procurement, there is United Nations procurement procedural regulation. Even if you do not mention anything in your offer letter saying that you are going to retain or maintain your pricing for at least 90 days ,for example, it is regulation or sometimes the terms and conditions in, QR we call it, terms and conditions specific stipulations. Therefore, you're bounded by terms and conditions of United Nations procurement. So after your submitting offer to United Nations, you change your mind that you want to change something, especially pricing. You cannot, you are not allowed to change your pricing at all. After you submit the pricing, you basically have to keep your promise and the price at least for 90 days. Sometimes a terms of reference, TOR, will give you a very specific instruction, how many days and how the delivery is to be made, all this information would be in there. What I'm trying to say before we get into main public procurement practice, and then at your market introduction and sharing information about how you're getting into, this basic understanding is the key element of your success. Because I want you to sit back and then think about changing different airplane. Airplane you are going to embark right now, it is public procurement airplane and you used to use commercial market airplane, where you get in there, there's little rules and regulations imposed, people basically get together, you can go wherever you want to go, and that you can meet your customer and meet your buyer and you strike a deal and you sign the contract. Then anything can be negotiated, anything can be terminated at free will. If you don't agree with each other, you can go arbitration, you can go to court. However, in public procurement airplane that you are going to embark right now, once you get on this airplane, you will be stuck in this airplane where we have rules and regulations, and you have certain guidelines and there are so many do's and don'ts in this market. I think that's a very important understanding. I want to remind you that we are in public procurement airplane. You are going to embark in this new airplane and I have to say, "Welcome on board public procurement airplane." That being said, let's have a look at the first segment of the US Federal on the procurement market. This lecture is on an online platform therefore, I don't know whether you are listening to this lecture from the States or any other country, maybe there are some Korean audience here and also maybe there are some other people in the Asian countries. When it comes to UN procurement, obviously I think we're going to see a lot of people from India, they are the key contributor, and main actor, and also I can see a lot of benefit from those people from the Southeast Asian countries if they want to do more public procurement, especially with the United Nation. Some other countries that are eligible for Trade Agreement Act, as we discussed last session, so if your country already is in agreement with the US government, either by Free Trade Agreement or any other legal framework, it would be very interesting session for you to listen in. Let's have a look at overall concept of what it means by dealing with US Federal Government. The public procurement itself largely used for a vehicle, to procure product services for public entity. The Federal Government is funded basically by all of the people taxed, so people pay taxes and then that's how the government functions. All the employees, government employees, all other equipment, all other maintenance cost, everything is paid by the government. Public entity or contracting authority is itself bounded by various types of rules and regulations. In other words, their hands are tied, airtight actually, because there are so many things they must not do or they cannot do, but there are some things they should do and they can do. Before we get into the US Federal Market. Let me have a look at what it means by dealing with the US federal market. Obviously, there is no doubt that US federal market, particular market the one of the largest public programming market in the world. If you have a look at 2018, the fiscal year, total of more than $520 billion being spent for the US Federal Government and couldn't service didn't work. When I said the goods and services and work, let me go back and define again, the good that we know what that could mean and services basically, I don't think I need to add any explanation about that but work mean normally construction. When we say more than $520 billion spent for US federal government the procurement in 2018 physical year that means that's the money US federal government has spent after appropriate by the Congress either for the acquisition, the public tender format of acquisition, or a different type of acquisition for a good and services and work. It is obviously one of the largest public procurement market. But if you look at the overall market of youth federal size, that is more than 15 different domain department in the US government. Among them, the US Department of Defense are the single most, sorry, important in terms of the public procurement market, important agency because they consumed a traditionally more than 60 percent. So 2018 physical year, US Department of Defense, DOD, let's call it DOD consume or spend more than 66 percent of entire procuring the budget. There is nobody can argue that share size of the military side and also military forces a capability for the US, the DOD, they got the largest carrier operation and also they got all sorts of the military capability from sea, land, and air. Now the space, so all these agencies we talked about, you cannot deal with all of these agencies. In other words, we have multiple choice. Now have up to 15 different potential customers that we are going to deal with, whether your company doing million-dollar or $10 million, $100 million, unless you really are capable of doing business with the multiple sites, multiple functions, if you are from overseas, not in the United States, overseas a [inaudible] has been always dealing with one customer at a time, to not trying to target two customers at a time that will normally not work. As a first segment of this important session, the out of the oldest agency in the federal government, we need to focus at one or maximum two of the agency that you can work with, because each agency has different rules and regulation at different weight to the divisions with, of course, they have a big umbrella of what we call the federal acquisition regulation as rules and regulation. Even these all rules and regulation, legal framework and very difficult and they're not easy to follow up but there is no other way around it, you must understand that there is rules and regulations in this public procurement aircraft. This is the market we are going to work and then from the next segment, we're going to have a look at each individual component which is relevant to your business. Thank you.
