Protecting the Process - no talking please!

Public sector Request for Proposals (and other competitive processes) state that all enquiries are to be in writing. However, this instruction does tend to be 'ignored' by many vendors, who for various reasons, NEED to speak to a real person. Some people politely state they cannot discuss the process; others can be downright rude; and yet others mistakenly chat things up. Strangely enough, people don't realize the reasoning behind this instruction and risks associated with ignoring it:

1) Telephone game - remember as a child the secret game where you whispered something into the next person's ear and then it travelled down the line to end up something totally different from what it started as? Wikipedia notes that the educational factor of that game is "It shows how easily information can become corrupted by indirect communication"1 Most procurements involve a committee or procurement team, so that enquiry then needs to be communicated to the others and an answer generated. It would be good to know your question isn't mutated!

2) Perception vs. reality - there is an adage that when it comes to media and the public sector - perception becomes reality - whether there are secrets being disclosed to a person on the phone directly or not, if someone discusses/answers questions verbally to one proponent, many will believe there was 'more to it'. As well, tone of voice, exact words wouldn't necessarily be replicated even if it was written down afterwards for distribution.

3) What is lobbying? There are some terms popping up in RFPs now that will disqualify a vendor for 'lobbying'. The definition given in some of these solicitation documents is "must not attempt to communicate directly or indirectly with any employee, contractor...about the project...unless otherwise permitted". This may not always be clear, but "must" becomes a mandatory criteria, and if anyone has "attempted to communicate" outside of the allowable method (in writing) they have a non-compliant proposal and would be disqualified from the process! If they don't get disqualified, then the public sector organization *may* hear from other proponents about accepting a non-compliant proposal and end up paying out $$ for breach of their process.

4) Interesting turn of events - In a complete turnabout, an unsuccessful proponent (let's call him ABC) complained that the winner (DEF) was being allowed to do something that ABC had been told would not meet the requirements of the program. Nowhere in our solicitation document had we said this particular item would NOT be allowed (it wasn't even mentioned), so wondered where he got this information - he "admitted" that he had a meeting with Mr. S and discussed the program and this was something that he based his proposal upon. YIKES! Luckily for the project, Mr. S. wasn't on the evaluation committee, nor had he been involved in the RFP process. In fact the RFP stated explicitly that all enquiries were to be in writing, and would be posted publicly on the website plus "information obtained from any other source could not be relied upon". So ABC couldn't argue the process was flawed...I believe he was going to sue Mr.S. directly for misleading him.

Lessons? Questions and Answers in writing can become a part of the RFP and clarify requirements; everyone will have the same information (words); vendors won't be disqualified for starting a conversation about the process; and staff won't be in a position where they may end up named in a litigation for a misunderstanding/misinformation!




PSBlog by Katherine Caughran is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.