On June 28, 2001 the senior program staff of the Center for the Study of Democracy and of the United Nations Development Programme to Bulgaria held a meeting to discuss the Memorandum of Understanding ("Certified Partnership" Agreement), signed in late 2000, for cooperation on issues of common interest and exchange of information and ideas between the two organizations.

UNDP Deputy Resident Representative Ms. Trine Lund-Jensen, CSD President Dr. Ognian Shentov, and the staff members present outlined the major issues from their programs, which could serve as points for possible cooperation. These included the integration of CSD's anticorruption initiative Coalition 2000 into UNDP's local governance initiative; joint activities on the local Ombudsman, the Ombudsman on Gender; training of Parliamentarians; CSD/UNDP IT for Development Initiative. Ideas for augmenting the Draft Outline of the second CCF were discussed. These covered the following areas: establishing a "Vulnerability Index" for measuring project impact and supporting social assessments for the next CCF period, making local NGOs' and local stakeholders' initiatives more prominent, obtaining more visibility of the Early Warning System through media and communication channels, securing of E-signature secondary legislation, making more explicit the anti-corruption aspect of CCF, etc. Regular follow-up meetings will be held in the future, and the next one was scheduled for September, 2001.