Asia Pacific Procurement Forum

1st CONSULTATIVE MEETING

Asian Development Bank, Manila, Philippines
August 24 to 25, 2009

POSSIBLE ISSUES: IDENTIFYING PROCUREMENT CHALLENGES

Provided below are topics (and sub-topics and issues) identified in similar earlier exchanges for which
issues/challenges will have been identified at the morning plenary session:

1. Assessing Procurement Systems and Evaluating Performance

• Country Systems – use, quality, benchmarking
• need to increase overall understanding of the OECD-DAC tool
• integration of public procurement with public financial management system
(procurement plan)
• piloting for procurement performance benchmark among selected procuring entities
• strategies for developing reliable information on procurement performance

2. Developing Procurement Reform Strategies

• High degree of uncertainty about how best to use the OECD-DAC assessments as an
input to procurement reform strategies
• Share examples of different countries on procurement reform progress
• Procurement Legislation (legal and policy)
• Implementation Capacity
• Sustainable Procurement (environmental and social considerations)

3. Strengthening Procurement Management

• Relationships between central Public Procurement Authority (PPA) and rest of
government
• Possible conflict of interest between PPA and their parent bodies
• the capacity of PPAs
• management of public perception (e.g. status, agency website, PR, public awareness
campaign)
• adequately funding PPAs

4. Improving Procurement Execution

• develop on-line management information system (MIS) for public procurement
• e-Procurement (including suppliers training)
• Co-existence of e-Procurement and traditional approach
• PPP
• New Contracting Methods (eg. framework and performance based)

5. Performance Monitoring & Oversight

• Relationship between
o PPA and executing agencies
o PPA and accountability institutions (internal/external audits, communities etc)
o PPA and anti-corruption agencies
• Developing a monitoring model that is suitable for PPAs

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 • Anti-Corruption/Governance
• Risk Management (e.g. performance monitoring, technical & financial audit)
• Procurement and Civil Society

6. Building Procurement Capacity

• How can national capacity-building programs and public procurement training strategies
be reinforced?
• Sustainability of capacity building efforts
• Establishing effective linkage between national and international training institutions
• Any good practices (OECD-DAC, PCDC-UNDP, other country examples etc)
• Mandating periodic procurement training for practitioners with appropriation of
necessary funding resources.
• Encouraging private providers and national institutions to provide relevant training.
• Donors to finance the involvement of international training institutions in supporting the
national procurement training systems.
• Working together towards formulating a scheme for national attestation of procurement
professionals.
• Assessing capacity --- benchmarking --- and monitoring progress.

7. Forum Management and Deliverables

• Management organization and workings
o Secretariat/Steering Committee/Advisory Board/Working Groups -- topical,
regional, sub-regional, other options
o Role of partner countries and donors
o Selection process for partner country representatives/alternates
o Role of consultants for implementation support
o others

• Deliverables
o Need for action plan or controlling agenda to set priorities and monitoring
framework
o types of deliverables -- country/regional/sub-regional reports/thematic
reviews/progress reports/other and periodicity
o regional/sub-regional workshops and/or conferences
o mid term plenary conference or other mid-term monitoring or stock-taking
mechanism
o training mechanisms - web-based, thematic workshops, seminars, peer-to-peer
exchanges, toolkits, templates, other
o use of web - library of electronic resources (types?), ongoing network/dialogue -
listserv, blogs, 'helpdesk' and/or e-newsletter (periodicity?), other
o progress measurement and monitoring -- benchmarks, stocktaking, and how to
measure what actions covered by Forum focus
o other

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