The City of Toronto PayIt Procurement: Freedom of Information Requests, Fairness, and Transparency II
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 Feb 24-Feb28 2022
when you read the reports for the decisions the City made about PayIt they relate to a lot of things: pandemic, modernization, business case, etc. those are important contextual factors and senior staff/city manager clearly think the deal is a good idea. they have info I don’t.
i’m not getting into those factors, because they clearly did. but they’re not the whole equation. what I’m getting into is: a check-in on norms for procurement, the interpretation of/adherence to policy, what the use of the terms fair and transparent mean in practical application
today a few things about norms. as I mentioned yesterday, the City said I can have a maximum of 5 FOI requests going at the same time. FOI #3 I’m going to file today and it’s for the Gardner report that was used as part of City staff’s recommendation to sole source PayIt
“Staff conducted a market assessment through a third party (Gartner) and favourably ranked PayIt as unique in its offering…” from July 2020 staff report “Innovative Partnership for Digital Government Platform” (pg 8)
point for today is the economy of third parties in procurement and norms. Gartner, and another firm that enters the picture during the swiss challenge, are used. as we consider accountability and public service capacity in tech, we need to map/understand this part of the equation
read more about Gartner here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gartner— at the City of Toronto “The use of Gartner goes back to 2011. The City has been leveraging the Provincial Vendor of Record since that point. the City’s current contract has a value of $225,711, net of HST” (source: staff)
we’re on a path to a new public tech approach (see City of Toronto Digital Infrastructure Plan). so we need to understand the status quo/current realms of influence on our IT. Gartner brings an ideology to policy that is more commercial/market frame than public tech/open source.
no one was hiding the size of the swoop this deal is/was in the title of the staff report: “Innovative Partnership for Digital Government Platform” — that part was loud and public and transparent from the time it was also suggested as a sole source.
then there was this part: “Staff is seeking authority so that negotiations with PayIt can include consideration of other valuable potential benefits to the City through the commercial arrangements with PayIt…”(pg. 2)
“including the co-development of innovative solutions to enable the scaling of digital platforms in the Canadian marketplace.” (pg. 2)
so, to close, FOI#3 will be Gartner. open government aside: I should not have to FOI a report paid for by the public for the public. odd norm. I’m interested/curious to see if the Gartner report gets into the “City going into business with PayIt” as part of its advice, or not.
FOI#3 for Gartner report filed
“The development of specifications is consistently identified as a potential high risk area for procurement in two respects” (pg. 15) from “Previous Audit Reports — Common Themes and Issues” 2020
“Fairness and equity in the process: ensuring that specifications do not present a risk to fair and open competition.” (pg. 15)
one thing to pull out from the clear tie made here between specifications and fairness is: when a vendor submits an unsolicited proposal, as PayIt did, they fundamentally frame and shape the specifications. how is/was that influence considered?
today we deconstruct a few bits of FOI#2, the documentation for how the City dealt with PayIt’s unsolicited proposal. According to 2007 policy, there are 4 criteria an unsolicited proposal has to “pass” in order for City not to require standard procurement
As the policy starts off: “1. Unsolicited quotations or proposals should not be allowed to circumvent the City’s procurement process. An unsolicited quotation or proposal should not be considered if:”
“a. It resembles a current or upcoming competitive procurement that has or will be requested”
now we turn to first staff report about PayIt, 2020: “The City has been working on a customer experience transformation for the past few years, however we are now required to work at unprecedented speed and scale, with greater impact and outcomes” (pg. 1)
going to make a chart with the 4 criteria in one column, and how the City assessed them in another. hold those first two pieces beside each other and you can already feel a few questions forming. they were working on this for years already, but didn’t intend to go to tender?
“An unsolicited quotation or proposal should not be considered if: b. It requires substantial assistance from the City to complete the quotation or proposal”
interpretation of the idea “to complete the quotation or proposal” matters here. is this inclusive of the proof of concept? that is some of the substance of FOI#1 — staff time spent + access provided to City infrastructure through the course of developing a proof of concept.
as referenced earlier, the development of specifications (aka requirements writing) part of procurement is a high risk area. as I write, I realize how helpful it would be to have the unsolicited PayIt proposal. also know commercial secrecy will likely be an issue. will ask for it
reminder: this unsolicited proposal, and the City procurement dominoes that fell before and after the point of its receipt by the City, eventually led to a contract valued at $20,000,000-$25,000,0000 CAD for the vendor over the first three years.
input to consider: how does or doesn’t lobbying tie into specification development/creation of the unsolicited proposal? especially given that specification development has been flagged as a high risk area for procurement.
“An unsolicited quotation or proposal should not be considered if: c. the goods or services are readily available from other sources”
jumping the timeline a bit here, but it’s for the purpose of FOI filing. Later on in this procurement, the City hired a fairness monitor. This firm wrote a letter certifying that the principles of fairness, openness, and consistency had been maintained in the City’s process.
it would be helpful to know more about the information that this firm received from the City in order to make their fairness attestation.
I’ll ask the firm directly as well.
aside: there’s quite a few tech policy ties here. one of them: as parts of the tech community seek to audit govt algorithms, it’s good to see how auditing non-automated processes for fairness works. how much context is provided and considered in this market for fairness services?
this criteria — c — ties to Gartner FOI#3. it also ties to the definition of goods and services. this is where the definition of what PayIt provides, and how, figures significantly into staff analysis. also figures into staff’s contextual interpretation of policy written in 2007.
final thing for today then move to post/new thread. how does PayIt opening an office in Toronto factor into these considerations of goods and services? the timing of that announcement is another event in the timeline of this procurement.
“Toronto, Ont — Sept 8, 2020 — In the continuous effort to support the local community, PayIt founder and CEO has announced the opening of PayIt’s Canadian headquarters.”
