WE are going to bid on Recovery.gov
- Written by
- Clay Johnson
- Date
- 06/17/2009 10:57 a.m.
We've decided to do something crazy. On Tuesday afternoon, someone handed us a copy of the Recovery.gov 2.0 RFP and we thought: what if we try something truly radical here. What if we opened up the process of government contracting by bidding on this thing? We together-- not just we meaning The Sunlight Foundation-- are going to bid on redoing Recovery.gov to learn more about the process of government contracting, and to try and build what is perhaps the biggest federal transparency-related website.
We aren't government contractors. We've never done it before. We haven't a clue what we're doing. We don't even know if we're eligible. But who cares? We know we have a talented technical team here, and we know we have a great community of people around us. And we know we can do better than a lot of the government contracting establishment for a lot less money.
We need your help bidding on this and building a credible document. This is a short turnaround RFP -- it is due Friday, June 26th-- and together I think we can do something amazing. Let's write our response together, figure out what the best solution is, and give the Recovery board our ideal response.
Together (and that's the only way it is going to happen) we can make something amazing happen. We're taking our bid and opening it up for anyone to edit on the Sunlight Labs wiki
Maybe we'll fail, maybe we'll succeed. We have only a few days to figure it out, but whatever we have on the wiki page by Friday June 26th at 11am Eastern time, I will take, edit for formatting, spelling and grammar, compile, and deliver to the RAT board. Even if we don't fail, we will have created a standard by which we can judge the recovery.gov website when it is released.
Will you help? Read the RFP and help build the bid
I'll be in the #transparency room on irc.freenode.net to answer any questions and we can figure this out. Is this crazy? Completely. I'm sure some people even in our community will call us nuts. But trying to change a system is hard, and sometimes requires experimentation. I hope any and all will join us.
Discussion
What are Your Thoughts?
Have thoughts that might fuel this discussion further, post them below. (Markdown syntax is supported in comments.)
I get where you are coming from, but saying things like "We haven't a clue what we're doing" isn't going to help the cause!
I think proudly not having a clue about the government bidding process is a major point of this effort.
It's a nearly impenetrable jungle of conditions, acronyms, rules, and guidelines, and it's high time that some sunlight be shone on the process.
Holy hell. If you guys won the contract, I couldn't imagine how vast an improvement that would be.
Something tells me, however, that the project will be awarded to a firm whose website is hosted on Geocities (oh wait...Yahoo discontinued that...okay, their company website will be "under construction), and it will appear sometime in 2012.
Good luck.
I doubt the IRS will sit idly by while a not-for-profit bids for a government contract. But it can't hurt to try!
The solicitation requires that the bidder is capable of maintaining recovery.gov (check out page 6 of the solicitation - Operations). Does Sunlightlabs have the necessary human capital and management to run such a huge site?
Are other proposals made public? If anything, in the process of drafting your own bid, maybe you could set up a forum to critique other proposals?
If that's possible, then that kind of exposure would probably help combat any conflicts of interest between choosing the best vendor and choosing the vendor who has the best connection to the RATB.
This is really exciting, I wish you guys the best of luck! I hope I can help in some capacity..
Fraser:
I think that's where the "we" comes from. Sunlight Foundation may not have the capacity, but the community that we put together to bid on this may. What if, we chunked this plan up and got best of breed open source providers to provide each piece.
I think you need to read the solicitation (actually, a pre-solicitation notice - there's no actual RFP yet) - online at: https://www.fbo.gov/index?&s=opportunity&mode=form&id=9745fb34e48a36a32b4fc589c3e371cb&tab=core&tabmode=list
It states pretty clearly:
RECOVERY--THIS NOTICE IS PROVIDED FOR INFORMATION PURPOSES ONLY. THIS OPPORTUNITY IS AVAILABLE ONLY TO CONTRACTORS UNDER GSA’S ALLIANT GOVERNMENTWIDE ACQUISITION CONTRACT.
So.... unless you're already a contractor under the GSA Alliant contract, you'll need to subcontract to someone who is - if that's even possible on such short notice.
Yeah there is, Miles. Click here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/16515421/RAT-Board-Solicitation
Best of luck, Sunlight. However this ends up, you all will certainly be learning a lot!
As someone who's worked on lots of proposals, I have some thoughts and ideas for you to take as you will. Just some things that all govt contractors do for you to either follow or ignore at your leisure:
Almost always, there is a "Cost Proposal" team and a "Technical Proposal" team. Both groups of people get turned on pretty much as soon as the decision to bid has been made. Its actually a LOT of work to do both parts well. Getting to the right cost involves bringing the right mix of people which you have to fit into labor categories and all the rest. This is a totally separate task from figuring out why your team is unique (the reason the govt will hire you), and how you will codify that throughout the tech proposal.
I've never seen a successful proposal that didn't have an awesome, hard driving proposal manager behind it. If you're expecting this all to happen via wiki, you will be disappointed. Usually the Prop manager starts with an outline for all the relevant sections, and has a sentence "message" that he/she wants that section to say. This gives the section writers a mark on the wall to hit.
But the bottom line is this - when you're behind the power curve on these, the tension in the last few days is so thick it can be cut with a knife. The proposal manager keeps focus and discipline, and most importantly, keeps the priorities in line. You won't have time to get done with everything you want - the prop mgr forces decisions to get to the finish line.
Regardless, your clear, simple answer why you are better should cascade every part of the tech prop - it should be re-iterated multiple times, in slightly different ways. Think of a Baroque piece, like Bach's Brandenberg Concertos, where the same theme is carried on slightly differently by each instrument group.
Most successful proposals "ghost" attack their competition. For instance, if you know who is bidding and what their potential problems are, you make the case that your team doesn't have any of those problems, faults, etc.
You probably won't want to hear this, but if you're interested in winning, consider partnering with a small business who already has all the BS contracting stuff down, and can do that sort of thing in their sleep. Teaming with those who fill your weaknesses leads to winning.
"You are what you eat." If you want to start eating govt. contracts, you will eventually turn into a government contractor...
For various reasons mentioned elsewhere (you're a non-profit, and you're not an Alliant contractor) you're not eligible to bid on this. There's no point doing a response "on principle" because your response is going to be ruled "non-responsive" by the Contracting Officer and no one is ever going to see it.
However, you can respond to the presolicitation posting and that will be read and possibly used as input in the selection process. For example, you could provide them with your ideas of what to look for in a successful bidder, or ideas for requirements for the redesigned site.
You can also contact the Alliant firms (almost all of them are in the Northern Virginia / DC area) and see if they're going to bid on this and whether they'd be interested in partnering with you. What they'll want to know is what you bring to the table that will make them a stronger bid. Most likely that will be some kind of unique experience. You'll want to have a strong case for that with past experience and resumes.
I'd check with your legal counsel before embarking on any of this. You could very well jeopardize your non-profit status and create a big headache for yourself if you don't approach this carefully.
The few times I've visited this site I haven't exactly been impressed by this organization's interest in true openness (rather than fake Beltway-style openness). See past comments at [1].
However, I have a lot Drupal development experience and if this site wants to send me money I might be willing to help with the technical specifications and staffing.
Then again, maybe something obviously fake would be better than at least partly artifical "sunshine".
[1] peekURL.com/z72rxhy peekURL.com/z25pbg7 peekURL.com/zl3hldk peekURL.com/z45vzl3
I'd like to address the nonprofit status part. There is nothing illegal about nonprofits engaging in work or receiving payment that is consistent with their mission and that funds their work. In fact, doing so has a long history (think Goodwill, for example). There is an entire field called social enterprise, and well-known firms in this space including Democracy in Action and Network for Good who perform services for businesses, government, and other nonprofits without jeopardizing their nonprofit status. If Sunlight were to be able to do this work, it would be very consistent with its mission, which is why Clay is raising it in the first place.
Obviously, others have pointed out other limitations, such as being an Alliant firm, but there's nothing inherent in the Sunlight Foundation's nonprofit status which would preclude them from doing the work.
Here is the list of 59 Alliant contract holders
http://www.gsa.gov/Portal/gsa/ep/contentView.do?programId=15865&channelId=-24746&ooid=14264&contentId=26032&pageTypeId=17112&contentType=GSA_BASIC&programPage=%2Fep%2Fprogram%2FgsaBasic.jsp&P=9FG4
The comments have been great, but a comment box is limited in feature set, so it isn't ideal.
So, this is just a friendly reminder that the Sunlight Labs wiki page referenced above is the best place to find/post resources for this effort.
It seems to be there is a potential conflict of interest between your mission to make government more transparent as a third-party organization and becoming a government contractor to implement a project on behalf of the U.S. government. It is true that non-profits engage in government contracting and for-profit activities; I work for such an organization. However, the mission of increased transparency and openness within the USG by an organization would seem to be jeopardized if a share of revenue comes from the USG. I do not believe that you can be both transparency watchdog and USG contractor.
If Sunlight were to create a separate organization that focuses on technology sharing and development, then it could make sense.
Damn, that sound's so easy if you think about it.