With new RFP, Philly city government is serious about procurement reform

FastFWD, the city’s Bloomberg Philanthropies-backed experiment to reform city procurement, is finished.* Now the city wants to take that experience and turn it into something tangible.
The city is looking for a company or an individual who will talk to FastFWD participants and figure out what worked and what didn’t, then use that information to create a a set of tools the city can use to be more innovative when it comes to procurement, according to a city request for proposals posted last week. That means, for example, making it easy for city departments to pilot new tools.
It’s an ambitious RFP. Think of it as the city’s effort to make the lessons from FastFWD stick.
From the RFP:

We seek to wrap the participant’s, and participating City staff’s collective experiences and sense of what did and didn’t work into a toolkit that will guide the next stage of Philadelphia’s efforts to encourage City departments to try pilots, learn about goods and service providers in new ways, and infuse the FastFWD-style of innovation into how we work.

Submit by March 5
The contract is for less than $32,000. The project is due by the end of the third week of May 2015.
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*The accelerator itself is finished, but FastFWD startups are in various stages of contracting with the city.