Twenty five participants recently shared experiences, lessons and ideas on establishing and implementing the new CoST programme at the first CoST International Workshop.

Held in the run-up to the Africa Launch of the CoST International Programme in Johannesburg, Republic of South Africa, the workshop provided representatives from four countries interested in joining CoST (Botswana, Mexico, South Africa and Uganda) to learn from the experiences of the 8 participating countries (Ethiopia, Guatemala, UK, Tanzania, Vietnam, Philippines, Malawi and Zambia).

It also provided an opportunity to discuss the new CoST programme including the information to be proactively disclosed, the different approaches to the assurance process and identifying and overcoming the challenges of the multi-stakeholder approach.

Participants heard from Jaime Montes (Mexico) who introduced an information management system which tracks over 13,000 contracts per annum, and an intelligence software system that analysed the data collated from those contracts.

Bekure Ketema (Ethiopia) demonstrated the potential of a civil society workshop can build demand for the information disclosed by CoST whilst Matt Parker (UK) showed how the UK Government wishes to use the data collated by CoST as part of its National Infrastructure Plan.

In the final ‘peer-review’ session, existing and new CoST countries presented their Country Implementation Plans, detailing objectives, activities and outputs for the next 12 months.