Citizens are the direct beneficiaries of procurement output. To provide better services for citizens, social accountability is instrumental in ensuring the effectiveness of the procurement process and strengthening both national and local government. BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD) was entrusted with implementing a pilot project by Central Procurement Technical Unit (CPTU), under the Public Procurement Reform Project II. The project tests how citizen engagement works at the implementation level of local public procurement work which the Local Government Engineering Department (LGED) implements. To promote citizen engagement, the project forms local level committees in the piloting Upazilas that are responsible for overseeing selected project works in the locality. This qualitative study was based on Key Informant Interviews (KII) with relevant stakeholders and In-depth Interviews (IDI) with individuals in the local community. It presents the interim results of the pilot project and looks into the process and challenges associated with the piloting. Finally, the study suggests ways to improve the status of citizen engagement in public procurement through recommendations. The study concludes that the citizens’ role of observing implementation is supposed to ensure the accountability of the actors such as bidders/contractors. Such third-party monitoring through direct citizens’ engagement is expected to effectively contribute to achieving the target of a socially accountable procurement process, thus increasing the technical knowledge of citizens will bring expected results.
Authors: Hossain, Md. Shanawez; Markony, Gazi Arafat Uz Zaman; Ahamed, Raihan
Type: Case Study
Year: 2016
