Social Engagement & Messaging Workshop under Public Procurement Reform Project II
Public Procurement Reform is vital to improve the governance and public service delivery in terms of Public Procurement System. To communicate the benefits of the reform especially e-GP, a two days workshop named as "Social Engagement & Messaging Workshop" was held on 20-21 November 2015 at Srimongal, Sylhet. The Central Procurement Technical Unit (CPTU) of Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation Division under Ministry of Planning organized the workshop with technical assistance of The World Bank. Bangladesh Center for Communication Programs (BCCP) facilitated the workshop.
A total of 30 participants from Government procuring entities, tenderers, civil society, media professionals, and officials from CPTU, The World Bank and BCCP attended the workshop. Director General of CPTU Md. Faruque Hossain inaugurated the workshop, while Mr. Zafrul Islam, Lead Procurement Specialist of The World Bank spoke at the inaugural session as special guest. Ms. Yasmin Khan, Team Leader and Ms. Khadija Bilkis, Deputy Team Leader of Social Awareness Campaign and Communication Component under the Public Procurement Reform Project-II facilitated various sessions of the workshop. The overall objective of the workshop was to find out various ways to create awareness among the intended audience of this program and to motivate them using e-GP to participate in public procurement process. The participants also get involved in various brainstorming sessions to develop effective messages communicating the benefits of e-GP and to identify the most efficient ways to disseminate those messages.
The participants discussed that it is very much important to make the stakeholders specially tenderers to understand that e-GP ensures transparency, accountability, equal treatment, fair competition, timeliness and best utilization of public funds. They also discussed that effective means of communication through social engagement is essential for changing the perception of all concerned. Considering the new generation and government policy, use of Social Media and ICT based interventions were also got equal importance in the discussion of the workshop.
The speakers of the workshop opined that the increase of overall GDP growth can be facilitated through e-GP. e-GP ensures improvement in public procurement and has opened a new opportunity for overall development of the country. The workshop was closed with the expectation that the reform especially e-GP will be popular and people will use this system to participate in any kind of Government procurement.