Question 2 Excerpts from The Straits Time Article, Dated July 23, 2021: Auditor-General finds wastage of $5.39m of public funds at HPB over excess fitness trackers (Source: https://www.straitstimes.com/) SINGAPORE - The roll-out of a national fitness challenge by the Health Promotion Board (HPB) was found to have wasted $5.39 million of public funds, due to fitness trackers that were not put to use, the Auditor-General's Office (AGO) has said. Lapses in management of operations and weaknesses in controls For the Health Promotion Board, the AGO noted that its lapses pertained to the National Steps Challenge seasons 1 to 5, which had ended between one and five years prior to the audit. AGO's checks found an excess of 268,000 fitness trackers valued at $4.26 million in total. Following this discovery, the Health Promotion Board carried out a full stock count in January this year, which found that it actually had 341,000 excess trackers, valued at LOG311 Copyright ©2022 Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS) TOA-July Semester 2002 Page 3 of 5 $5.39 million in total. The audit office noted that while the stock of trackers was properly accounted for, the Health Promotion Board's processes were inadequate to ensure. "The receipt and distribution of trackers involved manual processes and multiple external parties. There was no central monitoring of the movement and stock of trackers; records maintained were incomplete; and there was no periodic reconciliation of records with physical stock on hand," it said. The Health Promotion Board said on Thursday that it has taken immediate steps to remediate the lapses and strengthen its processes. "The over-estimation of final demand arose as HPB had pre-emptively topped up its stock of fitness trackers each season based on the observed interest from the public, which manifested for example in long wait times and queues from tracker collection. For future seasons of the National Steps Challenge, HPB will be more conservative in our projections," it said. Answer the following questions linking to case study scenario stated above. (a) Appraise the government procurement process at Health Promotion Board for studying the concerns reported by AGO in the given article. Your answer should determine and assess the steps in the procurement process that are impacted based the evidence from the given article. (b) Examine the areas for improvement to prevent lapses in management of operations and weaknesses in control in the given article. Question 1 Procurement function in an organisation is the major spender of funds for purchases. So, purchasers may be tempted towards unethical behaviour by accepting gifts from vendors and observing double standards in procurement decisions. Choose an organisation either Giant Hypermarket or Sheng Siong in Singapore and answer the following questions. (a) Defend the need for ethical decision-making process for the chosen organisation's procurement decisions. Your answer should review possible issues with current decision-making process and support the need for all steps in the ethical decision-making process in the chosen organisation. (b) Distinguish the impact of unethical behaviour types on the probity in procurement decisions of the chosen organisation. Your answer should review possible probity issues in the context of chosen organisation and differentiate their impact due to types of unethical behaviour with supporting evidence.