The City of Toronto PayIt Procurement: Freedom of Information Requests, Fairness, and Transparency III
A post in a series to understand and assess the procurement process followed for PayIt. This post is a straight copy/paste of a thread of tweets — this is an archival post to cover tweets from Mar2-Mar 21, 2022
new thread, post above is archive of last round of tweets. again, doing this in microsteps to avoid overwhelm. this morning a) emailed partnerships office for copy of unsolicited proposal + b) emailed firm that provided City with fairness attestation letter to request debrief.
the firm that provided a fairness letter to the City about the swiss challenge procurement is called P1 Consulting. they have a page on their website dedicated to describing their “Procurement Advisory Services”
the copy in the procurement advisory services section is generic. it does not talk about whether they have any kind of specialization in software procurement. this is the full list of their services:
same goes for the copy in the fairness advisory services:
“We provide assurance that the procurement processes undertaken by our clients are fair, open, transparent and compliant with all regulatory requirements.” http://p1-consulting.com/fairness_services/
it will be good to further explore and understand the size and shape of this procurement support industry. it will also be good to understand the level of expertise within that industry in regards to software and technology.
now to return to the beginning/the unsolicited proposal from PayIt. the City’s website has a page called “Presenting a New Business Idea to the City”
The City “regularly requests proposals for goods and services through its standard procurement process. For innovative, commercial ideas that will assist the City in achieving its goals, it welcomes unsolicited proposals from individuals or organizations.”
“The Unsolicited Proposal Process is governed by regulations concerning lobbying City Councillors and officials. Proponents wishing to discuss their proposal with City Councillors or officials before submitting it must pre-register with the Office of the Lobbyist Registrar.”
here we see there is explicit consideration in terms of lobbying activity and the submission of an unsolicited proposal. pinning that for a moment/for the timeline I’m creating. last thing today: here is the application form for an unsolicited proposal — https://toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/97dc-p_oct-2_aoda_UP_template.pdf
interesting small update on two fronts. firstly, the person that did the fairness attestation for PayIt swiss challenge is no longer at the firm the City hired to provide it. this takes them out of the institutional memory of this process, leaves only what lives in documentation.
the second one is more of a substantial process problem. the firm said “given our commitments and obligations related to confidentiality, we are not permitted to speak about the Project publicly”. (the fairness attestation they provided for PayIt)
how can we construct public oversight for this process? how can we hold this (and any other) vendor of fairness accountable for their outputs if we can’t see into the process? now to move this question set back to the City. commercial secrecy + public/democratic matters. trouble
thinking FOI#4 is about the information provided to this fairness vendor, but that also feels like a mess. going to email the partnerships office again (no reply) for the unsolicited proposal in the meantime. And ask staff about the fairness vendor procurement, to start.
only three outstanding FOIs and I already need a spreadsheet to keep track of the 30 days for a response part.
there is a v simple interface that could be created for this, city-side. pinning for requirements development. the future of some kinds of civic engagement around accountability definitely require more FOIs being filed and more general literacy around them.
also we should have community FOI-a-thons
over two weeks since I’ve asked the office of partnerships for a copy of the PayIt unsolicited proposal. nothing. have asked again today. nothing yet on either of the first two FOIs filed in January either.
