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Sprint start date: Week of September 22
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Sprint end date: Week of December 14
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Frequency: Weekly. The day and time will be decided collectively by the participants.
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Duration: Ten sessions over twelve weeks.
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Target audience:
This sprint is ideal for cross-departmental teams within cities, including procurement and finance professionals, open data or information technology program managers, teams involved in vendor outreach, contracting agencies, or other relevant departments. All public servants are welcome, regardless of seniority level within the administration.
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Language: English
Opening up opportunity in city contracting: leveraging data to improve procurement spend and vendor participation
Opening up procurement through better data and vendor engagement can improve value for money and create more opportunities for businesses—especially disadvantaged businesses. But right now, municipal procurement is often a black box where governments have little data and data analytics, and vendors find it challenging to find, win or successfully deliver city contracts. It doesn't have to be this way: open contracting reforms centered around better data and vendor engagement have helped governments around the world to improve their processes and systems so that cities and vendors get better results from procurement.
In this sprint, you will build your understanding of open contracting strategies, including opening up procurement data to make it useful for city staff and vendors, and meaningfully engaging with the vendor community. Through a series of Masterclasses, Hands-on sessions, and technical assistance Support Sessions from OCP’s team of experts, you will dive into your own challenge and context, identify pain points in your data and vendor systems, and make actionable plans to tackle them. Procurement data maps, KPIs, vendor user research, and strategic procurement improvement plans 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). Cities that have participated in this Sprint in the past have successfully achieved Silver Certification from What Works Cities.
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 three individuals from procurement and finance personnel, open data or IT program managers, supplier diversity staff, buyer agencies, or other relevant departments. This sprint is open to cities at all levels of procurement, data, and vendor engagement maturity. We highly recommend that procurement and data team members are part of the Sprint.
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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 four hour-long Masterclass/Hands-on Sessions, a final Showtime Session, as well as bi-weekly 1-on-1 Support Sessions to make progress in between.
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 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 plans to address a specific pain point identified in your data system or vendor engagements, with specific outputs and tools that you can carry into your work.
Important Notes
Space is limited, and registration does not guarantee participation.
Let’s open up procurement—so it works better for your city and the businesses you serve.