Government purchasing expert confirms that 90% of RFP winners decided before RFP is actually issued . . . with an important caveat!

When the procurement ombudsman for the Canadian Federal Government announced last summer that “The government has inadvertently created the conditions (for monopoly),” and that “It’s not what the government intended to do and that’s why we think a review would be beneficial to see what the impacts are, including the unintended effects,” it was not necessarily a total surprise in terms of the steadily declining rate of both supplier engagement and response to public sector RFPs.

In fact, in a radio interview in May of 2009 with Canadian Federation of Independent Business VP Corinne Pohlmann (“Government Procurement Policy: A Question of Synchronization Versus Compression”), it became clear that the issue of procurement in the public sector was of waning interest to the association which represents more than 108,000 small businesses across the country. According to Pohlmann, only a small percentage of her constituents were pursuing opportunities within the public sector, and of those a good percentage viewed the RFP process has being overly cumbersome and largely ineffective.

All this of course coincides with the revelation by former aide to New York Governor Mario Cuomo Al Gordon that 90% of all winning bidders are decided through a series of open, non-clandestine meetings in which the vendor gains what Bradt has referred to as legitimate and transparent buyer preference.

The following PI Inquisitive Eye TV excerpt from a Special scheduled to air later this month featuring a series of interviews with suppliers and government sector experts centered around Bradt’s new book Government Contracts Made Easier, will undoubtedly prove to be both enlightening and maybe a little controversial.

Government Contracts Made Easier with Judy Bradt (Part 2)

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