Procurement is reforming how cities work
Source: Bloomberg Cities Network
More and more, city leaders are looking to leverage the collective billions they spend on goods and services to achieve ambitious goals. And after the upheavals of COVID-19 and the murder of George Floyd, building wealth and growing business opportunities in communities of color is at the top of many mayors' lists.
Mayors in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and other cities are among those doubling down on using procurement to advance equity goals. As Boston's Michelle Wu said last year, "We must use every tool possible to ensure equity in city contracting and build wealth in our communities."
Bloomberg Philanthropies is supporting cities to reform procurement through a number of programs, from the City Data Alliance to innovation teams to the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, in partnership with leading procurement experts from the Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab, or GPL. Elena Hoffnagle of GPL says many cities go into this work daunted by the thought that they have to first conduct a full-scale study of disparities in their contracting. But even small steps can make a big difference, she says.
“Cleaning up the procurement process to make it more welcoming, less burdensome, and more accessible—or affirming that your city wants to do business with Black-owned businesses or to create partnerships with, for example a Hispanic chamber of commerce—are, from our perspective, better first steps than waiting years for the results of a disparity study in order to launch a new preference program," Hoffnagle explains.
Here are some of the tools cities are using to notch quick wins on driving equity through procurement.
Step 1: Improve outreach and access
In Lansing, Mich., the first step was to escalate outreach with women- and minority-owned firms and to decode for them the uninviting process for bidding on city contracts.
Amber Paxton, Lansing’s Director of the Office of Financial Empowerment, says the city produced two webinars last year and spread the word about doing business with the city through community organizations with ties to various ethnic communities. Participants got a guided primer on how to bid for city contracts and gained entry to a local chamber of commerce event for diverse suppliers. They also received free, one-year access to the state of