
Recovery.gov Bid -- a Good Failure - cjoh
http://sunlightlabs.com/blog/2009/06/25/recoverygov-bid-we-failed/
======
sp332
"As I said before, this RFP was written in a different language. That language
isn't something we spoke fluently. We just took our first 101 class and have
begun to learn the language and the nuance involved and we can start sharing
it with you as we learn more."

This alone will change the world.

------
antidaily
"Management Approach: 15 pages"

Yikes. My life has been a lot better since I stopped writing these type of
proposals (and business is doing just fine). What a waste of time. The whole
RFP process is broken.

~~~
Kadin
It's not "broken" ... it's that way for a reason. And that reason is so it can
be steered to the people who are 'supposed' to get the work.

What the Sunlight Labs people don't really understand is that they never had a
chance in a million years of getting the contract. That's why the other
contractors have been so friendly to them; they were never seriously in the
running. If they had actually been competition, they would have gotten a much
more hostile reception.

That's not to say that what they did was a waste of time, but there's no such
thing as a fair and open competition when government contracts are concerned.
They're all rigged to a certain extent, and there's always more than meets the
eye.

If they (or any other company) are serious about winning work as a prime
contractor, they need to build up a Rolodex of people who can make phone calls
on their behalf. The best way to do this is to start off as a subcon, and work
up from there.

~~~
akeefer
I would contend that the point of the RFP process is to make it _harder_ to
rig. That doesn't mean that the vendors themselves don't try to influence the
RFP such that it makes them look better, or that the people issuing the RFP
don't do that themselves. But it's overly cynical and a misunderstanding of
where the RFP process came from to say it's there to rig the process: it's
there because the bidding process has been "rigged" since time immemorial, and
it's an attempt to make things more transparent and harder to rig. It's
certainly not totally successful at that, but it's unfortunately often better
than the other sorts of processes people use for major contracts (like no-bid
contracts, handshake deals, etc.).

~~~
anamax
> I would contend that the point of the RFP process is to make it harder to
> rig.

Whose point would that be?

The point of an RFP is pretty much determined by its author. It can be to
minimize said author's work (by cut/paste from previous RFPs), to ensure that
the right people get the work, to give the author cover if the project blows
up, etc.

