This is a quick introductory post to a topic that I hope we will be talking more about in the future on the SCF blog.

Here's the quick summary: It's not as bad as you've heard, its getting better, and damn it, let's help speed that along.

At the Code For America Summit last week there was much talk of procurement from speakers David Eaves, Clay Johnson, and Stacy Donohue. Stacy is an investor in SeeClickFix through the Omidyar Network. Her story is shared below and it highlights a very progressive and positive anecdote of group procurement of SeeClickFix by 57 municipalities in Massachusetts.

Abhi and Dharmista at CFA also hosted a very productive conversation on procurement at the CFA un-conference. Some very interesting solutions for helping to improve local government procurement came out of that conversation. Off the top of my head some of those solutions included:

-Breathing new life into Civic Commons. A place for cities to post successful projects and apps. CityMart.com would be a good venue for this as well.
-Creating a peer email list for start-ups and govies looking for advice on procurement.
-Encouraging lifting of RFP minimum thresholds in cities around the country.
-Documenting best practices in contracts and RFP's including creating a wiki that seeks to create the perfect gov + cloud based civic tech contract.