With the rapid development of universities and the continuous advancement of teaching and research, small-scale procurement plays an irreplaceable role in university education, research, and discipline construction, becoming crucial support for the "Double First-Class" university initiative. How to balance the contradictions between procurement efficiency, quality, and price to achieve optimal cost-effectiveness while effectively preventing corruption has become the greatest challenge for internal controls in university small-scale procurement. Under these circumstances, utilizing information technology and management methods to establish a comprehensive lifecycle smart system that includes budget management, online bidding, electronic signatures, asset registration, appointment reimbursement, asset disposal, and data reporting represents an effective approach to solving this problem by strengthening process documentation.

**Current Situation Analysis**

Universities, as public institutions of the second category, implement government procurement. Their procurement projects mainly consist of teaching and research equipment, facilities, experimental materials, and related engineering and services. Based on their characteristics, they encompass almost all procurement methods outlined in the Bidding Law and Government Procurement Law. Small-scale procurement belongs to non-bidding procurement, including both government procurement and non-government procurement categories.

As China's comprehensive national strength continues to grow, government support for higher education has increased significantly. University operating scales have expanded, and the total volume of small-scale procurement has grown annually, accounting for approximately 30% of total university procurement value and 80% of total contracts. However, university procurement personnel, limited by human resources, focus their main efforts on large-scale bidding and government procurement, lacking attention to small-scale procurement management.

Currently, university small-scale procurement faces several key issues:

**First, insufficient market competition.** Given the characteristics of small-scale procurement, information disclosure may not reach the level of government procurement or public bidding, preventing potential suppliers from timely and comprehensive understanding of procurement needs, thus unable to participate in full competition or provide compliant products and services. Additionally, due to universities being teaching and research institutions, some products or services in small-scale procurement are highly specialized, potentially creating industry barriers that limit competition.

**Second, inadequate information systems.** University small-scale procurement involves research instruments, teaching equipment, and other items covering almost the entire Government Procurement Catalog. Currently, no single small-scale procurement information system can encompass the entire procurement directory, and some universities lack information systems for certain procurement categories.

**Third, imprecise procurement budgets.** University budgets include government subsidies, research funding, teaching expenses, and various foundation grants. These funds arrive at different times with varying management requirements, particularly for horizontal project funding which lacks specific budget requirements, directly leading to imprecise small-scale procurement budgets. Given the uncertainty of research, small-scale procurement has high randomness, making precise budget execution difficult.

**Fourth, insufficient departmental coordination.** University small-scale procurement is generally not executed directly by procurement centers but coordinated by relevant functional departments such as Laboratory and Equipment Management, Asset Management, General Affairs, and Research Administration. However, these departments lack coordination. For example, whether laboratory benches should be managed by General Affairs or Laboratory and Equipment Management remains disputed, as does whether outsourced equipment falls under Research Administration or Laboratory and Equipment Management.

**Fifth, insufficient procurement efficiency.** Small-scale procurement projects are typically fragmented and frequent, involving numerous suppliers. With deepening audit, internal control, inspection, and supervision work, procurement personnel, to avoid responsibility and procurement risks, overly pursue "openness, fairness, and justice," rigidly following procurement procedures, causing users to shuttle between multiple campuses and departments for various approval processes, reducing procurement efficiency.

**Sixth, inadequate supervision and control.** Due to institutional mechanisms, universities have not yet formed an integrated internal collaborative supervision system composed of procurement, asset, audit, and disciplinary inspection departments, or existing systems cannot generate supervision synergy. Combined with inadequate small-scale procurement management systems and overly general management regulations difficult to implement at operational levels, comprehensive multi-level supervision of small-scale procurement activities cannot be achieved.

**Risk Prevention and Control**

Small-scale procurement is characterized by small amounts but large business volumes. To implement "streamline administration and delegate power" policies, universities have established autonomous procurement limits and categorized them by implementation entity: procurement by users themselves, secondary unit procurement, and school procurement management department procurement.

Therefore, for small-scale procurement, procurement entities should follow principles of openness, fairness, and justice, strengthen supplier qualification reviews, prevent benefit transfers and corruption, strengthen internal supervision to ensure procurement compliance, and publicize procurement results for social supervision to reduce procurement risks.

**First, solidify thinking and strengthen primary responsibility.** Current small-scale procurement processes overemphasize the responsibility of procurement functional departments while neglecting user primary responsibility. Actually, university procurement entities should be project leaders or funding managers, not procurement functional departments. Therefore, real procurement entities with matching rights and obligations, corresponding duties and responsibilities must be determined, strengthening user primary responsibility and pursuing accountability for potential violations, ensuring they achieve "dare not, cannot, and do not want to be corrupt" in thinking.

**Second, establish systems and standardize procurement behavior.** Regulations are the legal foundation ensuring standardized operation of small-scale procurement. Influenced by notices on improving government procurement budget management and research instrument procurement management for central universities and research institutes, universities have simplified research equipment procurement processes. Given the characteristics of small amounts, large quantities, and high frequency in small-scale procurement, universities should establish comprehensive regulations to clarify specific procedures and standardize specific behaviors, placing every node under transparent supervision.

**Third, departmental coordination and strengthened budget management.** Strengthening budget management is crucial for improving small-scale procurement efficiency and reducing risks. Procurement management departments should coordinate with asset management, development planning, and discipline construction departments to reasonably and scientifically prepare budgets, practicing the principle of "no procurement without budget, no overspending with budget." Budget preparation should be based on existing asset inventory and discipline development layout, considering overall planning and integrating procurement management with asset and budget management, ensuring accurate economic classification and detailed content for comprehensive deployment and integrated budget preparation, reducing blindness and randomness in small-scale procurement while promoting transparent, efficient procurement activities.

**Fourth, vertical integration and solid internal control foundation.** Internal control serves as the safety line for small-scale procurement, effectively compensating for procurement process deficiencies. Therefore, internal control construction requires audit departments to work with finance, supervision, discipline inspection, procurement, and asset departments to jointly construct a procurement risk prevention and control supervision management system, maintaining vertical integration and solid internal control foundations. Projects with substantial funding and frequent procurement should receive focused attention with strengthened supervision and management to prevent violations. Additionally, establishing comprehensive procurement information disclosure systems, improving procurement process transparency, and accepting social supervision ensures fair, equitable, and open procurement activities.

**Innovation Models**

University small-scale procurement must be both "delegated" and "managed" while providing corresponding services to faculty and students. Therefore, constructing an innovative management system suitable for university small-scale procurement is necessary to solve urgent problems encountered by faculty and students in procurement.

**Integrating multiple systems to construct a full lifecycle procurement management platform.** System construction's primary task is institutional development. Taking Southeast University as an example, the school revised its "Economic Contract Management Measures" in February 2024, further clarifying functional department divisions and responsibilities. Laboratory and Equipment Management handles school instruments, software, experimental materials (including chemicals), other goods (IT, security, logistics, sports equipment), instrument maintenance and software upgrades, equipment leasing, etc. General Affairs manages building repairs, decoration, renovation, landscaping, utilities, roads, supervision, decoration materials, furniture, property management, transportation, and special equipment maintenance. Research Administration handles outsourced services and technical consulting for science and engineering projects, while Social Science handles similar services for social science projects.

Based on the Government Procurement Catalog and Fixed Asset Classification Codes, comprehensive categorization has been established. To ensure full lifecycle management system construction, the school revised its "National Asset Management Measures" in 2022, institutionalizing full lifecycle management concepts.

Another important task is information system construction. Using instrument equipment and experimental material online bidding procurement as an example, small-scale procurement involves multiple information systems including online bidding/small-scale procurement systems, campus electronic signature centers, electronic contract management systems, instrument equipment management systems, experimental material management systems, and financial budget/reimbursement management systems.

All small-scale procurement business processes are fully documented and traceable, simplifying complex business operations, systematizing simple processes, standardizing systematic processes, and institutionalizing standardized processes, achieving both risk prevention and control while solving cumbersome procedural issues.

**Introducing new services and developing new productive forces for small-scale procurement.** Universities should be demand-oriented, service-based, business-model targeted, and technology-innovation driven, embracing big data, cloud computing, and other digital and intelligent technologies to develop new productive forces for small-scale procurement, improving resource allocation efficiency and enhancing procurement internal momentum.

With rapid information technology development and application, electronic marketplaces and online bidding procurement models continue iterating, not only improving small-scale procurement transparency and fairness but also promoting information disclosure. Using big data mining technology to combine external market data with internal small-scale procurement information helps procurement users better understand product prices and market conditions, reducing procurement costs, improving quality, and enhancing decision-making.

With blockchain technology development, electronic signatures and contracts have achieved fully electronic, paperless contract signing for small-scale procurement, ensuring information immutability and traceability while improving efficiency. Under the guidance of the fourth-phase tax system policies, electronic invoice promotion breaks physical and information space limitations, making reimbursement processes more convenient and efficient.

**Cultivating new business models and building innovative systems based on smart campuses.** Recent years have seen significant changes in procurement management concepts with improved administrative styles and ongoing thematic education, adding more service awareness and addressing urgent faculty and student procurement problems. Procurement management business models have changed, making service more important than management while adhering to regulations and maintaining bottom lines.

Therefore, procurement management forms must improve. Universities should leverage modern information technology, big data, Internet of Things, and AI to serve new small-scale procurement business models, requiring dedicated cultivation to build innovative systems based on smart campuses.

The "Smart Campus Overall Framework" proposes comprehensive smart campus architecture, organically connecting physical and information spaces, enabling resource and service access anytime, anywhere, creating conditions for building small-scale procurement management systems based on smart campuses.

Small-scale procurement innovation system construction focuses on "business department clustering, hardware deployment clustering, centralized data governance, and integrated application systems," following school realities, streamlining business processes, analyzing data logic, unifying data standards, and breaking technical barriers.

Using Southeast University as an example, the school operates 8 campuses across Nanjing, Suzhou, Wuxi, and other cities, with over 30 secondary colleges distributed across campuses, forming the system construction's physical layer and smart campus physical space. Through smart campus construction support, physical and information spaces are organically connected, providing convenient intelligent and information services from different dimensions, offering reliable, secure technical support for online and offline small-scale procurement management.

Through the information center's data platform and virtual private networks, various information systems are organically integrated to form a full lifecycle small-scale procurement innovation system, creating innovative models for intelligent service and management.