Citizens’ oversight of public procurement

During the seminar “Citizen Oversight of Public Procurement” BCSP researchers had the opportunity to learn more about the process of public procurement in order to better complete the role of the Citizens’ Overseer.

On the first day of training Head of Group for expert tasks in the Public Procurement office Daliborka Sreckov spoke about the changes in the new Public procurement law, focusing on defense and security sectors. She explained the researchers the new competences of specialized bodies in the procurement process and highlighted the challenges in their application, such as security certificates, the missing secondary legislation and creating space for civil supervisor in this complex process.

Sasa Varinac, president of the Commission for the Protection of Rights in Public Procurement procedures spoke about the challenges of civilian supervising and control. He was talking about the carriers, application and control of centralized public procurements, and also about the importance of a framework agreement as a new institute in domestic practice.

BCSP researchers learned more about mechanisms of control available to civil society from  Rade Djuric, researcher in Transparency Serbia. Djuric shared with them experience gained in the first civilian oversight of a public procurement in Serbia. On example of “Pharmacies Belgrade” Djuric talked about the appointment and authorities of civil supervisor, stages in the supervision process and the challenges for future supervisors.

On the second day of the seminar, a lecture was held by Stevan Radulovic, president of the association of professionals that brings together practitioners in the field of public procurement. Based on personal experience and the experince of members of the association, he spoke about the risks in public procurement. He explained that public procurement should be seen as a process consisting of research and planning, implementation procedure and execution of the contract and pointed out that in each area there are risks of corruption and activities which are product of low quality work. He also pointed out that the issue of purpose of public procurements is the first step where corruption or poor quality work in public procurements are born, but this step is often forgotten in control.

The seminar was ended on Tuesday, 10th September with a lecture by AnnaLou Tirol, permanent legal adviser in the USA Department of Justice. Subject of her presentation was following the procurement of defense and security, based on examples from practice while working as an assistant state prosecutor in San Diego, USA.