Enhance Transparency and Accountability of the State Competition and Procurement Agency and its Dispute Resolution Board

Project Description:

The PMC Research Center will enhance the transparency and accountability of the State Competition and Procurement Agency (SCPA) and its dispute resolution board (DRB).The project is being implemented within the USAID Good Governance in Georgia program. Significantly, it is a follow-up of a previously developed study; particularly, in February-March 2012PMC Research Centercompleted a performance assessment of the SCPA’s dispute resolution board and delivered a set of recommendations to improve the communications and public relations function, as well as the overall operations, of the DRB. Now, within this new project, PMC Research Center will help SCPA implement the solutions earlier proposed by its assessment team.

The precise goals of the project are as follows:

• Set up an effective communications system within SCPA which is well integrated with various functions of the Agency
• Assist the SCPA to implement the identified performance solutions
• Establish a system of regular updates of the SCPA web page withdaily news and press-releases
• Design and implement a system of developing analytical informationregarding the DRB performance and decisions, and displaying the analytics of the SCPA web-site
• Establish a monitoring system enabling periodic evaluation of DRB’spublic outreach processes
• Set up a civic monitoring system of the entire dispute resolution cycle

At the initial phase of the project, PMC Research Center will facilitate consultations with stakeholders and interest groups to identify their specific concerns and expectationswith regard to the transparency andaccountability ofSCPA. This will also present an opportunity to exchange ideas amongstakeholders and SCPA top or mid-levelmanagers. The second phase of the project will see PMC Research Center work to enhance the efficiency of SCPA’s public outreach function and monitor the cycle of DRB’s claim processing. At this stage, a draft report detailing the package of recommendations will be produced.

In the concluding phase, the project team willstudy theprocurement procedures and processes of SCPAso that these can be described accurately and listed in chronological order.