Government employees often fear that collaborating with prospective vendors or outside stakeholders crosses over a legal line and creates an unfair advantage. However, it is generally acceptable to communicate with potential vendors in a fair and open way before a formal solicitation has been released. Through a Request for Information (RFI), governments can solicit ideas from the vendor community, subject matter experts, and community stakeholders while maintaining a level playing field.
This module will help you gain confidence in using RFIs as a standard market research tool to inform an important procurement, learn how to design and issue RFIs in a simple manner to maximize vendor and community participation, and apply best practice RFI examples from across the country to meet your government's needs.
Government employees often fear that collaborating with prospective vendors or outside stakeholders crosses over a legal line and creates an unfair advantage. However, it is generally acceptable to communicate with […]
When drafting a solicitation, tight timelines, complex programs, and limited staff resources can make it difficult for governments to systematically reassess needs, gather strategic input in designing new solutions, or engage with providers to help them understand the departments goals and priorities. However, not conducting any market research runs the risk of receiving few high-quality bids or receiving quotes that are way over budget. Investing some time to understand the vendor marketplace before releasing a new solicitation can yield far better results. This quick read will describe 12 market research tools and explore which one is right for your next solicitation.
One effective tool for understanding vendor perspectives on your procurement process is a vendor survey. In this how-to guide, you will understand how hearing from both current and prospective vendors can provide valuable feedback on your procurement process, learn how to design and implement a vendor survey, and read about concrete examples and promising practices in survey implementation across different governments.
The Procurement Excellence Network is an initiative of the Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab (GPL). Housed at the Taubman Center for State and Local Government at the Harvard Kennedy School, the GPL conducts research on how governments can improve the results they achieve for their citizens. An important part of this research model involves providing hands-on technical assistance to state and local governments.
With support from Bloomberg Philanthropies.
