On May 11th, 2012, a 10-member delegation from Tunisia visited NIA in order to learn more about Korea¡¯s informatization policies and e-government strategy and vision as it pertains to e-procurement.

The Tunisian delegation was made up of officials from Tunisia¡¯s National Observatory of Public Procurement, National Center of Computing, Tunisia¡¯s Ministry of Information Communication and Technology and Secretary of the Presidency to name a few. With more than half of the delegation working in the Public Procurement sector, the General Director of the National Observatory of Public Procurement - Khalid Johmani, headed the delegation.

The NIA staff that took part in the meeting included Ju Hyun Ryu, Executive Principal and Dohyoon Kim, Senior Manager of NIA¡¯s Global Planning & Consulting Department. Executive Principal Ryu gave a presentation on NIA¡¯s activities and Senior Manager Kim then gave a presentation on e-government development in Korea and the future direction of Korea¡¯s Smart Government.

In the past, NIA has played an integral role in helping the Korean government in upgrading and implementing Korea¡¯s e-government as well as broadband infrastructure development so the Tunisian officials were able to glean some very meaningful information and hold discussions with all participants. More discussions took place once Korean e-Government and informatization was explained to the delegation. Some very meaningful discussions took place between NIA staff and the Tunisian delegation members. Various Korean best practices were discussed with particular interest in e-procurement so as to see how it could relate to the current status of public procurement in Tunisia.

The Tunisian delegation thanked their NIA hosts at the end of the meeting and promised to review the information gathered on their visit to NIA and Korea and use it in their own National Procurement Center to the best of their ability back in Tunisia.