Controller's Office: National Government Purchasing Cooperative

The Challenge

When you are in the grocery store, how do you decide which product to buy? Imagine you are buying potato chips for a party, do your guests like barbeque or sour cream and onion? Do you need to get name brand or will generic chips work? What about kettle chips? Are any of these on sale? Maybe your guests would like pretzels instead?

You think about all of this, and then eventually select one bag of chips. Local government procurement is similar to your journey to find the right snack; the City of Bloomington considers all the specifications necessary to ensure a product will serve its intended purpose and the broader community. The only difference between the city and your trip to the supermarket is that the city cannot make the decision to buy on its own - it has to go through a bidding process to make sure all vendors have an equal chance of providing this good.

This means writing up a specification for a product, sending out a request for bids, and then writing a contract. This is a detail-oriented process, requiring dedication and patience to see through to the end. The City of Bloomington is always trying to improve its efficiency, so how could it improve on such a procedure?

The Idea

Julie Martindale of the Controller’s Office had an idea to make the procurement process smoother for everyone involved. Julie is using a national government purchasing cooperative to see active contracts across the United States. These serve as an excellent baseline for the City of Bloomington’s agreements because the contract has already been written to the exact specifications needed. Julie searches the cooperative’s database and finds examples of products the city is looking for and then uses that contract.

The Cost

There is no additional cost to use this service other than the time it takes to search the database.

The Benefit

The primary benefit of the national cooperative is that the City of Bloomington can acquire what it needs at prices usually reserved for larger organizations. These savings are augmented further with savings in employee time. The City of Bloomington saves time on creating the specs, creating solicitation documents, holding multiple meetings, reviewing multiple submittals, creating a contract, awarding and administering contracts. The city saves time and money when using these national cooperatives for procurement.

Metadata

City Department(s): Controller’s Department

City Department Point(s) of Contact: Julie Martindale

Partner(s): National Government Purchasing Cooperatives

Type of Innovation: Process Improvement

Date Implemented: January 2004