Additional Resources #
A Guide to Reforming Information Technology Procurement in the Government of Canada: Based on a research project led by Dr. Amanda Clarke in collaboration with Sean Boots, this guide provides a succinct overview of the issues and challenges associated with contemporary tech procurement within the Government of Canada and why it needs to be reformed. To that end, it also advances a set of policy recommendations and emerging best practices for government leaders.
Citymart Procurement Institute: A guide for local government officials to better understand how procurement can be part of their governance process, enriching policy and decision-making. This resource contains eight learning units, each covering a logical step in the procurement process. Each unit contains an introduction to the topic, examples, expert insights, cases and worksheets to get you started.
Open Contracting Partnership Resources Archive: All of the procurement, contracting and budgeting strategies discussed above fall under the general “open contracting” methodology. According to the Open Contracting Partnership, a nonprofit focused on government transparency and efficiency in procurement, “Open contracting is about publishing and using open, accessible and timely information on public contracting to engage citizens and businesses to fix problems and deliver results.” OCP offers a rich library of resources.
Interactive Procurement Toolkit for City & Utility Officials: A toolkit to help government officials to develop a clear problem statement and select the most appropriate procurement approach for the issue they want to solve.
FVH Application Evaluator: An Open Source Software Tool for Comparing Bids: The Finnish public innovation agency Forum Virium Helsinki has developed open source software that facilitates public procurement. Both a tool and process, FVH Application Evaluator, “is a clear, comprehensive, replicable and easy to adjust for different kinds of procurements. The purpose of the tool is to make evaluation and comparison of proposals easy and agile. It includes graphic coverage which gives a visual overview quickly.”[^48] Public administrations can use, replicate and contribute to the code via GitHub.
Sample Request for Information (City of Boston)**: A sample request for information from the City of Boston soliciting submissions in order to gauge interest and gain information about potential solutions for their open data initiative.
The Government of Canada Open Resource Exchange: A repository of resources for government agencies, including a section for open source software.
UnTools: A collection of thinking tools and frameworks to help you solve problems, make decisions and understand systems.