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I had to smile while reading the post as I experienced this many times. It’s a shame. The question remains: How can this be improved? Especially critically when

I had to smile while reading the post as I experienced this many times. It’s a shame. The question remains: How can this be improved? Especially critically when public money is spent on large scale multi million projects. As a citizen, I would like to see a “fair” bidding process where the “best” supplier wins.

morsch 5y ago
A few things lend themselves directly from the article: More expertise on the buyer side overall (less reliance on a vendor to co-author the RFP). Better processes on the buyer side in order to lessen the one-upmanship regarding requirements. Both of these are easier said than done, of course, because if you had the expertise and the processes, why even hire somebody else? In ideal world, the answer is that you could do it, but you chose to spend your resources (your experts' time) somewhere else, e.g. writing more RFPs. Probably not very realistic for most businesses, but on the scale of governments, they really ought to have the necessary in house expertise. (But I'm sure they almost never do, whether it's building a bridge, buying a tank or developing an IT project.)
SkyPuncher 5y ago
Honestly, I don't think it can. Public perception cannot tolerate failure/issues - even if there are huge efficiency gains by not requiring _everything_ to be put through the process.
- Spooky23 5y ago
  RFPs are only one tool in public procurement. Usually you go the RFP route for a novel project that you don’t want to manage. I have too many years of experience in the space. The successful projects are always owned by government managers and RFP or RFQs off of centralized contracts (ie GSA) for specific tasks or people. It is simple. If you can’t manage the project, you probably can’t spec it either. And if you can spec it, only time to market is a ideal reason to RFP.
wodenokoto 5y ago
Sitting on the other end, it can be super frustrating having to go with the lowest bidder, which you very well know aren’t up to the task, but they managed to fill out the bid adequately at the lowest price. From here on it’s a battle to get the spirit of the bid and not some useless interpretation of what you asked for. It’s also a common tactic to seriously underbid and make up for it by overcharging for changes.
detaro 5y ago
Public RFPs are at least something you can sue over if your competitor gets too brazen benefits. More transparency into them for the general public would be nice, FOIA (or equivalent) requests help a bitbut then often come to late to intervene, just can bring it to light afterwards. > As a citizen, I would like to see a “fair” bidding process where the “best” supplier wins. Defining what is "best" is of course the biggest challenge. In many jurisdictions, it can deviate from "cheapest wins", but then needs pre-defined criteria for evaluation, and any judgement factor of course can go both ways - it can be used to protect from a costly mistake and to give a benefit to a inferior proposal. But such criteria can at least be used to push it out from cheapest-wins, and make it easier to attack the decision to attempt to compensate for bias. A big problem IMHO are follow-up RFPs where the initial one didn't ensure their viability. E.g. once a company has won "implement system X", all RFPs that require "integrate with system X" or "maintain system X" are on one hand formally ok because doing so is actually needed, but unfair because if system X is sufficiently proprietary, the first company obviously has a massive advantage.

morsch 5y ago

A few things lend themselves directly from the article: More expertise on the buyer side overall (less reliance on a vendor to co-author the RFP). Better processes on the buyer side in order to lessen the one-upmanship regarding requirements. Both of these are easier said than done, of course, because if you had the expertise and the processes, why even hire somebody else? In ideal world, the answer is that you could do it, but you chose to spend your resources (your experts' time) somewhere else, e.g. writing more RFPs. Probably not very realistic for most businesses, but on the scale of governments, they really ought to have the necessary in house expertise. (But I'm sure they almost never do, whether it's building a bridge, buying a tank or developing an IT project.)

SkyPuncher 5y ago

Honestly, I don't think it can. Public perception cannot tolerate failure/issues - even if there are huge efficiency gains by not requiring _everything_ to be put through the process.

Spooky23 5y ago
RFPs are only one tool in public procurement. Usually you go the RFP route for a novel project that you don’t want to manage. I have too many years of experience in the space. The successful projects are always owned by government managers and RFP or RFQs off of centralized contracts (ie GSA) for specific tasks or people. It is simple. If you can’t manage the project, you probably can’t spec it either. And if you can spec it, only time to market is a ideal reason to RFP.

wodenokoto 5y ago

Sitting on the other end, it can be super frustrating having to go with the lowest bidder, which you very well know aren’t up to the task, but they managed to fill out the bid adequately at the lowest price. From here on it’s a battle to get the spirit of the bid and not some useless interpretation of what you asked for. It’s also a common tactic to seriously underbid and make up for it by overcharging for changes.

detaro 5y ago

Public RFPs are at least something you can sue over if your competitor gets too brazen benefits. More transparency into them for the general public would be nice, FOIA (or equivalent) requests help a bitbut then often come to late to intervene, just can bring it to light afterwards. > As a citizen, I would like to see a “fair” bidding process where the “best” supplier wins. Defining what is "best" is of course the biggest challenge. In many jurisdictions, it can deviate from "cheapest wins", but then needs pre-defined criteria for evaluation, and any judgement factor of course can go both ways - it can be used to protect from a costly mistake and to give a benefit to a inferior proposal. But such criteria can at least be used to push it out from cheapest-wins, and make it easier to attack the decision to attempt to compensate for bias. A big problem IMHO are follow-up RFPs where the initial one didn't ensure their viability. E.g. once a company has won "implement system X", all RFPs that require "integrate with system X" or "maintain system X" are on one hand formally ok because doing so is actually needed, but unfair because if system X is sufficiently proprietary, the first company obviously has a massive advantage.