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Become familiar with the landscape of potential solutions
This section will help you:
Become familiar with the landscape of potential solutions
Engage responsibly with experts, the civic tech community, and vendors
Establish internal and external benchmarks
You may encounter these frictions as you do the work of market research. These are challenges the Recommended actions are designed to solve, or that may arise as you take those actions.
Most city governments work with a patchwork of digital systems. That means they need to simultaneously use, maintain, and modernize legacy systems, as they consider new software that may or may not be compatible.
Lack of attention to non-commercial solutions
License fees for off-the-shelf products are predictable, and therefore easy to budget. In-house development and open source software, on the other hand, are uncertain. However, they often provide competitive functionality, and give you direct control over costs, end user pricing (if applicable), data, and governance.
Hesitancy to engage directly with vendors
Civil servants feel that engaging with vendors in advance of a project is dangerous. It isn’t! Get to know the local and international software community. Become familiar with certain companies you respect. Be actively involved, and ask questions.
Civil servants rarely engage with peers (adjacent municipalities or ones that have key commonalities). By discussing mutual challenges, you might find existing solutions, receive recommendations, or glean best practices.
Become familiar with the world of experts, civic tech enthusiasts and vendors related to your project. And let them become familiar with you! If you are willing to openly discuss the problem you are trying to solve, you will hear expert opinions on existing or potential solutions—potentially saving you time and effort throughout the procurement process or pointing you to the best solution.
Peer jurisdictions often face the same set of challenges
Whether in communicating with constituents, HR, or traffic management, one of your peers may have solved the same problem you’re facing.
A rich ecosystem of vendors build and maintain software
Broadly speaking, there are several types of custom software development companies: enterprise, big business, mid-market, small, freelance, off-shore. Supporting the local ecosystem of software service providers may align with your broader organizational goals for economic development.
There is a wide variety of open source software solutions that rival the functionality of proprietary software
Visit the Github page and get a sense of how active the community of contributors and stewards is, paying particular attention to how recent the activity is.
Put out a call for ideas, or Issue a Request for Information (RFI)
informally, in the civic tech community, or formally, through city channels
Similar public sector organizations that have addressed the same problem statement.
Invite community groups, entrepreneurs, students and vendors.
Reach out to the academic sector
This is an opportunity for creativity!
What if there is only one commercially available software solution?
Competition is a good thing, but in rare cases only one vendor can deliver the solution—allowing you to bypass the open RFP. National Digital Service Agencies often provide resources to guide rationale for sole-sourcing—you will have to develop full documentation showing that only one solution exists, and procure it through a sole-source contract.
2. Setting internal and external benchmarks
Before you start writing an RFP, it’s important to establish and document internal and external benchmarks. These outline similar projects that have happened within your organization, and similar projects done by peer jurisdictions.
Ask about prior projects within your organization
What have prior software projects cost to procure and to maintain? Have they been successful? What can you learn from their process?
Audit other cities and other businesses
What do they use to solve the same problem? Is their software open source?
What are the industry best practices? What are the most common features? What are the most common software architectures and licensing models?
3. Mitigating downstream contract issues
As you analyze available solutions in the market, be critical and cautious of long-term issues that arise due to a specific business model, a general approach to ownership, or monetization, software performance, or contract details. This will influence your choice of strategy.
Research the following aspects of the available software options.
Software licensing and revenue models
4. Creating a market analysis report
Map out the landscape of existing software (open source or proprietary) that can potentially address your problem statement, as well as the vendor ecosystem who could potentially build custom software or adapt open source software to address your problem statement. You will then analyze the landscape using a variety of indicators.
Include software that could address your problem statement. Document the vendors who could build custom software to address your problem statement—whether that means adapting open source software or building new software from scratch.
Analyze the landscape scan a clear, neutral and objective way
Market analysis report(including a list of available software, vendors, and business models)
Software Development Price Guide & Hourly Rate Comparison
Why a NIC? [Networked Improvement Community]
Sample Request for Information (RFI)
Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat