Streamlining Government Procurement

City of Boston, MONUM Fellow, 2017

My Role: Solo designer/researcher · Timeline: 8 weeks · Impact: Policy recommendations presented to the Mayor; city adopted standardized technology RFP template

The Challenge

Governments can be bad at buying things — which sometimes makes them bad at serving people. Boston's technology procurement process was opaque, slow, and frustrating for city staff and vendors alike. Laura Melle, who sponsored this project within the Department of Information Technology, put it well: “procurement is incredibly important, but is often viewed as a boring, administrative, and frustrating function rather than an exciting, strategic opportunity to achieve great outcomes.”

The Solution

Working from the Mayor's Office of New Urban Mechanics, I started with a straightforward research question: how might we streamline the user experience of procuring services — for city staff and vendors — to achieve better outcomes?

Over eight weeks, I conducted 17 interviews, reviewed procurement statutes at the city and state level, and mapped the full procurement process for RFPs over $35K — capturing both the internal city staff journey and the vendor journey. I evaluated and introduced new features for the RFP-writing tool Govlist, developed user stories with their engineering team, and shipped new features on a biweekly basis. I also created a web-based procurement guide for the city's new intranet and wrote a formal policy memo to the Mayor with recommendations for improvement.

That process map became somewhat notorious around City Hall — during the research phase, I was known for carrying the draft diagram (several 11x17 sheets taped together with sticky notes attached) from meeting to meeting. When I presented findings to Mayor Walsh and his cabinet, I rolled the 11 in. × 6 ft. map out on the conference table. One cabinet member looked at it and said, "I thought it would be longer."

The Outcome

After the fellowship ended, I returned to support the city in adopting several of my recommendations, including formalizing a standardized RFP template for technology procurement — a change that made it easier for departments across the city to write clearer, more consistent solicitations. The process map I created continues to be referenced and requested years later.