- Registration deadline: 10/18/2024
- Sprint start date: Week of 10/28/2024
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Sprint end date: Week of 2/24/2025
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Frequency: Weekly (English cohort on Tuesdays, Spanish cohort on Wednesdays
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Duration: The sprint will run for 12 weeks
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Audience: This sprint is a strong fit for cross-departmental city teams from procurement, open data program managers, and community engagement staff. All staff are welcome, regardless of seniority level.
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Language: There will be two language cohorts running parallel, and each sprint session will have a separate English version and a Spanish version.
Opening Up Opportunity in City Contracting: Improving Your Vendor Participation Through Outreach and Data Sprint
Opening up procurement and expanding vendor participation can result in better value for money for city government, and more opportunities for businesses—especially for entrepreneurs from marginalized communities. But right now, city procurement can often be a confusing experience for vendors, and cities don’t always get the results they want from their purchases. It doesn't have to be this way: open contracting reforms have helped governments around the country, and the world, improve outcomes through better procurement.
In this sprint, you will build your understanding of open contracting strategies, including. opening up procurement data to make it useful for vendors and city staff, and meaningfully engaging with the vendor community. Through design workshops, peer-learning, and one-on-one technical assistance from our team of experts, you will dive into your own challenge and context, identify actionable pain points in the vendor experience, and design and implement a pilot solution to boost participation and efficiency. Vendor surveys, vendor-friendly marketing materials, platform usability assessments, process improvement plans, or procurement data maps are just some of the potential outputs participants might develop in this course. Plus, you’ll make progress towards the WWC Criteria under Results-Driven Contracting (see RDC7 and RDC8).
Please note that space is limited for this sprint, and registration is not a guarantee of participation. Additional cohorts may be offered in the future. We look forward to hearing from you!
How to get the best results from the sprint?
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All staff are welcome, regardless of seniority level. This sprint will be the most useful for cross-departmental city teams (of ideally 3 individuals) from procurement personnel, open data program managers, buyer agencies, and community engagement staff or other relevant departments. This sprint is open to cities at all levels of procurement, data, and vendor engagement maturity.
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This sprint is best for teams who have a specific challenge in mind that relates to procurement data and vendor engagement, or who want to boost their knowledge in these areas. Cities with electronic systems and processes already in place will be able to make the most progress, but this is not a requirement.
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Over the 12-weeks, teams are expected to participate in two virtual workshops and two cohort calls, as well as weekly 1-on-1 TA sessions to make progress in between sessions.
Sprint outputs and learning outcomes
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Tangible progress towards Results Driven Contracting (RDC) criteria RDC7: Open and Shared Procurement Data, and RDC8: Supporting Vendor Participation and Competition, and the foundational tools to continue to increase vendor participation and open up data after the sprint.
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Completed stakeholder interviews, a vendor journey map, and a procurement data mapping exercise (if time and capacity allow). You will receive templates and guidance to complete these tasks.
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Designed and implemented pilot solution to address a specific pain point identified in your vendor engagements, with specific outputs and tools that you can carry into your work.