Citymart Enabling Philadelphia to Change How it Buys
Solving…Not Buying
Solving…Not Ownership
A radical new arroyo to city purchasing finds the city asking vendors for problem-solving ideas—instead of calling for bids
Mar. 18, 2016
In an announcement earlier this month, the Mayor's office unveiled its programme for a reverse bidding procurement process—essentially letting anyone who wants city business organisation to see how their bid ranks, price-wise, and continuously lower their offering until the deadline. Mayor Kenney's Master Administrative Officer Rebecca Rhynhart says reverse bidding, which has been implemented in Los Angeles and Chicago, has the potential to bring contract costs downwardly between 5 and fifteen percent, saving the urban center millions of dollars a year—money that Kenney says tin be used to help fund universal pre-K.
It was an encouraging—if wonky—sign of progress in City Hall that nods to what the Mayor promised in his inauguration: Streamlining city services so they piece of work meliorate. It also tackles what has become an international movement to alter the fashion governments buy things. President Obama has mentioned it, in reference to the disastrous rollout of the healthcare signup arrangement its first twelvemonth, and procurement reform is one of the primal issues for Code for America, the civic hacking organization that peculiarly focuses on engineering science-related RFPs.
Merely it'due south what Rhynhart didn't mention at her press conference that is the truly inspirational—and tabular array turning—idea now wending its way through urban center government. Late concluding twelvemonth, Philadelphia became 1 of a handful of American cities chosen to work with Citymart , an international organization with one goal: Radically changing the style cities work with companies to solve civic problems.
"Cities are filled with capable people doing their jobs, but no i can know everything," says Julia Haselmayer, a principal at Citymart. "This puts the problem statement in the heart: Cities say what they want to solve, instead of what they want to purchase."
This is the old way of doing things: City departments identify a trouble—how to limit the amount of stormwater that goes to the waterways, for case—and and so a solution, such as water permeable playground blacktop. Then they post and send out a Request For Proposal (RFP) to vendors to bid on that project. With Citymart, departments place a trouble, but cease brusque of coming up with the fix. Instead, they consequence a conspicuously-written explanation of the problem, and telephone call for solutions from vendors.
"Cities are filled with capable people doing their jobs, but no one can know everything," says Julia Haselmayer, a principal at Citymart. "This puts the trouble statement in the center: Cities say what they desire to solve, instead of what they want to buy."
Citymart, started past Haselmayer'south husband, Sascha, an architect-turned-civic thinker, has helped 60 cities consequence over 100 challenges in the last five years, including London, Paris, Seville, Madrid and Sheffield. Their most ambitious try was in Barcelona, where Citymart helped six city departments effect challenges that needed to be addressed, including reducing bike thefts and digitizing museum athenaeum. Their call for solutions was intentionally widespread, to broaden the pool of vendors, big and pocket-size, who piece of work with the city, and their call to action reached far into the community—on social media, and fifty-fifty advertisements on the city's subway organization.
Barcelona's procurement website, usually visited 20 times when an RFP goes out, got 55,000 views in the first three weeks. And rather than the same five vendors behest on projects, 119 companies from effectually the world submitted solutions to the six problems. What's more, the urban center departments said the quality of the bids was higher than usual, and the ensuing contracts toll 30 percentage less than they'd budgeted. Haselmayer says the key here is not just ideas, but bodily solutions that have been proven in some mode—bike shares, for instance, which no longer seem new in places similar Philadelphia, but which are out-of-the-box ideas for other cities around the world.
"This is not about reinventing the wheel, which is very costly," Haselmayer says. "These are real existing solutions, from providers who take done this. Simply it opens up the process to more than of them, and to more than means of budgeted a trouble."
In Philadelphia, the idea of solutions-based procurement is non wholly untried. Under Mayor Nutter'south Role of New Urban Mechanics (whose mission was to "ameliorate radically the quality of metropolis services"), the city launched FastFWD , a problem-solving civic accelerator that targeted startups with new approaches to sometime problems. With a $1 million grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies , FastFWD in 2022 issued its first set of issues, around public safety. Of the 82 applicants who responded, x were awarded $x,000 and enrolled in a 12-week accelerator program run by GoodCompany Ventures , a nonprofit that helps to launch socially-minded startups.
Rather than the aforementioned v vendors bidding on projects in Barcelona, 119 companies from around the world submitted solutions to the six problems. What's more, the urban center departments said the quality of the bids was higher than usual, and the ensuing contracts cost 30 percent less than they'd budgeted.
2 of those companies were eventually awarded $30,000 metropolis contracts— Textizen , a text-based reminder system for the formerly incarcerated; and Chicago-based Edovo , which creates tablet-based education platforms for prisons. Both companies, who honed their unique solutions during the accelerator, have since re-upped their contracts with the city. The second circular of FastFWD—in which four companies are negotiating urban center contracts—is coming to a close in the next few months.
That experiment paved the mode for Citymart, which chose Philadelphia to be among its showtime few American clients, including New York, Miami and Long Embankment, California. Funded past a Knight Foundation grant, Citymart this year is working with Philly's Office of Innovation Direction to reach out to city departments, train workers on how to rethink the way they arroyo problems, sift through potential challenges, and then write an RFP in a style that is clear and equally uncomplicated as possible—the best way to ensure the broadest participation. (Citymart's original partner, the Office of New Urban Mechanics, has been absorbed the Section of Innovation Management, run by Andrew Buss. It falls under Rhynhart's administrative purview.)
In total, Citymart will work with Philly to present v problems to the community and select a vendor with the best solutions. Their offset problem, in December, came from the Streets Department, which is about to embark on a street prophylactic campaign. The city posted an RFP for the first phase, to help the department understand what Philadelphians already know about pedestrian and traffic condom. Buss says 8 companies, more than usual, responded to the challenge in a few weeks; the contract was awarded to Temple Academy'due south Institute for Survey Enquiry. The 2d problem, how to manage excessive stormwater, will exist posted on the city's Big IdeasPHL website in the side by side few weeks. Buss has put out a call to other metropolis departments to suggest ideas for the remaining iii challenges.
The goal for this year is preparation urban center staff to retrieve differently near how they buy services, then that afterwards the Citymart pilot, departments will use solutions-based procurement in as many instances as possible. "Nosotros're saying, 'You take this idea, let's frame it in a different style that'due south open-ended and can concenter more than people to the table,'" Buss says. "Nosotros're growing a network of people in the city who are able to work that style so nosotros can practice this on our own later on Citymart leaves."
To be clear, Citymart-style procurement does not work for every type of city purchase. Sometimes, city departments simply need newspaper, or an overpass merely needs fixing, or a bail measure simply needs an audit. Hasalmeyer herself says Citymart's goal is for 10 percent of urban center services to become through a solutions-based procurement procedure. It's likewise before long to know how far Philly will accept this notion, simply Rhynhart says she anticipates solutions-based procurement will exist a function of the new manner Philadelphia does concern, from its opposite bidding auction, to a new eastward-procurement system set to launch in 2022 to supercede the current (antiquated) method of bidding on projects—with paper proposals.
"Citymart is didactics the city to look at procurement in a different way," she says. "A lot of the issues the metropolis faces could be solved this way. And it would bring customs and businesses closer to the urban center to help solve its problems. That'due south a huge opportunity."
Photo Header: Flickr/OTA Photos
Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/solving-not-buying-citymart-philadelphia/
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