Secretary, Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division Mr. Pradip Ranjan Chakrabarty, inaugurated a four-day training on citizen portal and social media relating to public procurement at the Conference Room of Central Procurement Technical Unit (CPTU) on 12 October 2020. The training will end on 15 October 2020.

Concerned officers of CPTU are taking part in the training. It is being facilitated by Dnet, a consulting firm, engaged by CPTU for the purpose. Dnet has developed the citizen portal on public procurement for CPTU.

In the opening ceremony of the training, IMED Secretary Mr. Pradip Ranjan Chakrabarty said citizen portal on public procurement should be user-friendly so that even citizens from remote areas get access to information regarding ongoing or upcoming development activities in their locality.  

He mentioned that citizen portal on public procurement is a praiseworthy innovation. Focusing on promotion and publicity of the portal, he said, information about the portal should be given to government officers starting from the lowest tier up to the central level so that they can use the portal and also advice people to browse it for public procurement information.

Mohammad Abdul Mannan, Additional Secretary, IMED also spoke on the occasion. Participants of the four-day training will get in-depth ideas on the use and technical aspects of the citizen portal and social media.

On 26 August 2020, CPTU launched the citizen portal on public procurement (citizen.cptu.gov.bd) that allows citizens access public procurement data. The interactive web portal aims to enhance transparency and accountability in the process of public procurement by providing relevant information in line with the Right to Information Act.

From the portal, citizens can get information about country-wide procurement of Goods, Works and Services. In addition, citizens can also interact through citizen blogs and CPTU social media that are connected with this portal. Policy makers, officials of procuring entities, experts, researchers, journalists and others will be able to download procurement data to conduct analysis and understand the procurement performance.

The information of the portal is being updated regularly using the live data from e-GP system. Apart from that, the CPTU publishes information from different sources such as government agencies, citizen engagement platforms on public procurement etc.