How New York is transforming procurement by partnering with vendors

By Jennifer Geiling, Deputy Director for Policy and Partnerships, New York City Mayor’s Office of Contract Services

The city of New York contracts with thousands of businesses for more than US$20 billion a year to purchase goods and services. For many years, however, the procurement process has been daunting for these vendors, with complicated technology, regulations, and burdensome and duplicative information requests.

Generations of vendors knew that if they were going to do business with the city, whether their contract was large or small, they would have to deal with reams of paper documents needing to move from office to office, repetitive requests for the same information, delayed pa...