On Tuesday, January 21, the Alliance for Innovation (AFI), a non-profit association of local governments dedicated to fostering innovation and collaboration in the public sector, announced a new partnership with Civic Marketplace, an organization formed to help streamline government procurement. 

This collaboration will enable AFI’s members to access an innovative user-friendly procurement platform, offering a streamlined approach to search for and use cooperative government contracts that have undergone rigorous vetting for compliance with local regulations. Civic Marketplace’s ability to do this comes from its agreements with organizations like TXShare, the North Central Texas Council of Governments Cooperative, which taps into local government contracting in Texas and many other states. 

“This partnership with Civic Marketplace provides (members) with the latest technology to streamline procurement, reduce costs and foster transparent and impactful decision-making,” said Troy Riggs, the new director of AFI. He brings to his new job a wealth of management experience in both the public and private sector, as well an impressive resume in law enforcement, having served, among other positions, as executive director of safety in Denver and Director of Public Safety and Police Chief in Indianapolis.

“I think Civic Marketplace is a game changer,” he told us in a conversation at the end of last week. “Our members will get white glove treatment and understanding of the process and will have all these peer cities that they can learn from.”

In addition to procurement, Riggs’ focus at AFI will be on providing workshops and training on the many issues that bombard local government leaders every day, with a focus on best practices, changing technology, future readiness, and, of course, innovation. “You can’t survive as a leader today unless you’re innovative,” Riggs said. 

Civic Marketplace’s chief executive officer, Al Hleileh emphasized the neat fit between the two organizations. Both are focused first and foremost on meeting the needs of residents, providing broad outreach to the private sector and technology innovators. Both also put a high value on optimizing quality, time and cost efficiency.

Civic Marketplace entered the procurement scene last fall after months of testing out its approach, technology and online platform and listening to the needs and reactions of city users from around the US. By the end of last year, it had signed key agreements with a number of other organizations, including an agreement signed last November to work together with NIGP Code & Consulting, which is owned by NIGP – The Institute for Public Procurement. 

Civic Marketplace can be of use to governments of all sizes, but has particular potential for the many smaller governments and agencies that do not have the resources or staff expertise to buy the goods and services they need efficiently and effectively. 

Both Riggs and Hleileh talk about the problems that have existed in procurement in the past that need to be solved. For example, Riggs brings up a procurement “debacle” that he faced in one major city, in which internal government practitioners and the city’s legal team signed off on an $8 million contract for a technology-based record management project without understanding that the product they were buying did not yet exist. “I got there six months later and I’m not seeing movement. I started looking into this and realized that the people on our side of the table, the city, (might) do this type of procurement once in a career. And the people on the other side do it every day.

“It wasn’t a level playing field. Civic Marketplace levels that playing field. They have experts (who know how) to do this.”

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