Recipes for Procurement Excellence: Check Out the Seattle Procurement Cookbook!

Winning a City contract can be a game-changer for local small businesses. But confusing and inefficient processes can keep new, small, and Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC)- owned firms from being successful as City contractors. These inefficiencies also take up valuable staff time and resources.

This is why Seattle participated in the Bloomberg Philanthropies I-teams Procurement Cohort, a $1 million, two-year grant by Bloomberg Philanthropies to help transform our approach to buying. The Procurement Transformation project is a partnership between the Seattle Department of Finance and Administrative Services (FAS) and the Mayor's Innovation and Performance Team, with technical assistance from the Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab. The project aims to transform City procurement into more efficient, results-driven, equitable, and strategic.

Through this project, the City of Seattle made many important changes to make procurement more efficient, equitable, strategic, and results-driven. Along the way, we've built momentum to create a culture of procurement excellence here in Seattle, encouraging staff at all levels to embrace innovation and creative thinking to achieve great results. We've also learned many lessons.

In this "cookbook" of recipes for procurement excellence, we want to share some of the accomplishments and learnings from this two-year project. The hope is that this book will spread good ideas, spark inspiration, and encourage all of us to continue transforming procurement.

Thank you to all of the City of Seattle staff and partners who have been instrumental in leading this work. Procurement transformation requires continuous improvement. We encourage procurement change agents across the City to continue to look for opportunities to make procurement more efficient, equitable, strategic, and results-driven for Seattle residents.

If you have ideas, questions, or insights after reading this book, please keep the conversation going! Join the Procurement Community of Practice Teams group or email the Seattle Innovation & Performance Team at [email protected].