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The first Round Table meeting was held in Paris in January 2003 at which the initiative was launched. It was followed by a second meeting in Kampala, Uganda in February 2004 and a third in Johannesburg, South Africa in late November and December 2004. All three meetings generated lively discussions and debate, which are fully documented in the Summary Reports of the first two Round Tables and attachments that are accessible from the Round Table Information and Calendar pages. These Summary Reports provide a quick background about the initiative, a breakdown of the latest activities being undertaken at that time to produce useful good practice papers or other products that developing countries can adopt to improve their own systems. At the third meeting participants discussed and formally endorsed a consolidated set of revised and strengthened good practice papers and committed to put them into implementation. The final set of good practice papers are available here. The commitments made by the Round Table participants are documented in the Johannesburg Declaration dated 2 December 2004.
Capacity development at the system-wide level is extremely complex, therefore the Round Table has broken down the objectives of the capacity strengthening process into three separate but interlinked areas or themes and produced good practice papers on each:
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Mainstreaming: A strategy for bringing procurement into the mainstream of the development debate, and in parallel make sure the procurement function is viewed more as a central component of the budget and financial management system of each government, thereby enhancing the awareness that good procurement is vitally important to government success and procurement reforms are more successful when they are integrated into wider public sector reform efforts.
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Capacity Development: An effective procurement capacity development strategy that is based on lessons learned; the results of recent research on change management, drivers of/barriers to change, systems theory and the like; and therefore is likely to yield more sustainable results.
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Benchmarking, Monitoring & Evaluation: A clear set of benchmarks and standards for procurement systems against which their performance can be measured or benchmarked and to develop the necessary tools to monitor and evaluate this performance both at the national and procuring agency levels.
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