Co-hosted with Asian Development Bank, program draws 16 civil servants from 7 countries including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Azerbaijan and Indonesia
A tailored training program is under way to give participants hands-on experience with Korea's national e-procurement platform, Narajangteo, and help each country identify areas for improvement in its own procurement systems.
The Public Procurement Service announced Monday that it is co-hosting an Asia-Pacific e-procurement capacity-building workshop with the Asian Development Bank.
Now in its third year, the workshop runs Monday through Friday and brings together 16 working-level procurement civil servants from seven countries selected by the ADB: Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kiribati and Thailand.
The program teaches Korea's public procurement and e-procurement systems at a level suited to frontline practitioners from the participating countries. In the opening phase, participants share the current state of procurement in their home countries, allowing trainers to assess each country's baseline. The middle phase focuses intensively on Korea's procurement regime and hands-on training with the next-generation Narajangteo platform. In the final phase, participants draw on what they have learned to draft concrete action plans — practical development strategies — for improving procurement administration in their own countries.
Particularly notable is the use of the next-generation Narajangteo system, successfully launched last year. Participants walk through the entire procurement cycle firsthand, from bid announcements to bid opening, making it easier to compare the platform with their home systems, deepen their understanding of how K-e-procurement operates in detail, and identify specific improvements they can apply domestically.
Lee Hyeong-sik, the Public Procurement Service's planning and coordination officer, said the hands-on experience with Korea's e-procurement system would "serve as a genuine foundation for advancing procurement administration" across the Asia-Pacific region. "We hope this training goes beyond building e-procurement capacity and leads to greater transparency and efficiency in each country's procurement administration," he said.
kwonhl@heraldcorp.com
