BidBridge understands the pressure and uncertainty public purchasing organizations face as a result of receiving stimulus funds.
As a result, we have created an ARRA Reference Guide for our customers containing information to assist in understanding the level of education, accountability, transparency, and competition that is being demanded by our government.
The ARRA Reference Guide includes the following:
- Quick facts
- Where the money is being spent
- How the money is awarded
- Eligibility and reporting requirements
- Is your team prepared?
The ARRA Buyer Reference Guide is now available to registered BidBridge buyers for free download at http://resources.bidbridge.com/.
If you are not a registered BidBridge buyer, you can register today at https://bids.bidbridge.com/registration at no cost or obligation. Once you have registered with BidBridge, you will have full access to our Resource Library.
Here is a list of basic requirements that cities, counties, schools, and other purchasing organization will have to meet in order to have access to ARRA funding:
- DUNS Number
- Accountability and Transparency
- Infrastructure projects must be certified to have received full reviews and vetting as required by law
- Investments must be reported quarterly
- Registered with Central Contractor Registration (http://www.grants.gov/)
- Annual Audit
- Grant funds must be audited annually per Single Audit Act Amendments of 1966
- National Environmental Policy Act
- Environmental Assessment to determent if Environment Impact Statement required
- Uniform Relocation Act
- Policies regarding compensation of those displaced from home or business by a public program
- Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973
- Disabled persons shall not be excluded from participation or denied benefits based solely on disability
- Davis Beacon Act
- Workers on federally funded projects must be paid at least the locally prevailing wage and benefits
- Buy American
- No Recovery Act funds may be used in the building, repair, maintenance, or alteration of a public building or work unless all of the “iron, steel and manufactured goods used in the project are produced in the United States”, with certain exception
- Equal Education Opportunities Act
- Faculty, staff, and students may not be discriminated against and school districts are required to overcome barriers to students’ equal participation
- Title VI
- Discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in programs receiving federal assistance is prohibited
- Title VII
- Workplace discrimination or harassment on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, or sex is prohibited
- Title IX
- Prohibits discrimination based on sex in education or activity receiving federal money
- Age Discrimination Act of 1975
- No discrimination on basis of age in program or activity receiving federal money
- Fair Housing Act
- In sale, rental, or financing of dwellings, no discrimination based on race, color, national origin, religion, sec, familial status or handicap
- Fair Credit Reporting Act
- In consumer credit reports, promotes accuracy and ensures privacy of information
- Age Discrimination in Employment Act
- Employment discrimination against persons 40 years old or older prohibited
- Americans with Disabilities Act
- Under certain circumstances, discrimination based on disability is prohibited
- Historic Preservation Act
- Required review process for all federally funded projects affecting sites listed or eligible to be listed on the National Register for Historic Places
Source: North Carolina League of Municipalities Southern City
Spending Stimulus Dollars Wisely: BidBridge Promotes Competition in Public Works eProcurement
As public sector organizations examine American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) stipulations and guidelines, eProcurement services provider BidBridge announces its alignment with the Stimulus Act, providing adherence to crucial stimulus spending factors like competition and transparency through reliable reporting and efficient time allocation.
BidBridge facilitates a secure, real-time electronic sealed bid platform that allows suppliers to place multiple bids on a project, replacing the public sector’s traditional process of a one price per supplier response. BidBridge has already worked with more than 400 public agencies, leveraging extensive experience in a young market.
Fostering Competition with Reverse Auctions
According to the White House Office of Management & Budget’s “Initial Implementing Guidance for ARRA,” “Competition is the cornerstone of our acquisition system…Competition saves money for the taxpayer, improves contractor performance, curbs fraud, and promotes accountability for results. Agencies should review their internal policies with a goal towards promoting competition to the maximum extent practicable.”
“The reverse auction promotes ultimate competition because it provides suppliers the opportunity to submit multiple bids in a sealed environment, ultimately finding true market value,” said Jim Headlee, CEO of BidBridge. “Consequently, local and state governmental bodies are saving taxpayer funds by creating an atmosphere for efficient, fair competition. What BidBridge offers is a cost-effective, timely and efficient avenue for running reverse auctions in a secure, electronic environment.”
Transparency and Reporting through BidBridge’s eProcurement Platform
To increase accountability, the ARRA stipulates that state and local agencies should provide detailed reports of how funds have been allocated. BidBridge’s secure web-hosted platform allows clients to monitor and manage the bid process from open to completion, providing real-time tracking with complete transparency for government organizations. Buyers can follow supplier bids as they are placed, and BidBridge’s eProcurement system logs all aspects of the bid process for detailed reporting after the auction is complete.
Because the platform is web-based, no cost or installation for software is required. BidBridge provides suppliers with a web-based tutorial on how to engage bids via the BidBridge platform and helps educate buyers on how the bidding process works.
Timely Delivery of Services
ARRA guidelines state that appropriated funds should be spent in a timely manner and state and local agencies should adhere to reporting deadlines. Additionally, funding will be made available in increments over a specific timeline.
BidBridge provides its clients with immediate access to resources and tools designed to assist procurement professionals in achieving the rewards of efficient purchasing. Electronic procurement eliminates the need for physical data transmission and takes place in a real-time environment, allowing decisions to be made much more quickly than in the traditional one price per supplier bid environment.
Leveraging Expertise to Guide the Process
Throughout the buyer’s relationship with the company, BidBridge helps identify the right type of purchases for the reverse auction format while providing valuable assistance in spec development to ensure the buyer gets the product it wants at a fair market price. BidBridge’s team of professionals deploys strategic solutions to help expand the pool of qualified suppliers competing for its clients’ opportunities.
For news and more information on BidBridge’s stance on stimulus spending, please visit: http://strategies.bidbridge.com.
About BidBridge
Founded in 2005, Louisville-based BidBridge provides eProcurement services to both the public and private sectors, including cities, towns, municipalities and the medical, educational and corporate sectors. Through its competitive sourcing and online procurement system, BidBridge assists its buyers in achieving true-market value for the goods and services needed for ongoing business operations. Significant cost reductions and procurement efficiencies have allowed BidBridge’s buyers to save millions of tax payer, corporate and investor dollars, ultimately producing a positive effect on compressed budgets.
For more information, please visit: http://www.bidbridge.com/.
SAN FRANCISCO — The biggest federal public works project since World War II offers tantalizing possibilities for the struggling tech market.
President Obama’s staggering $787 billion economic stimulus package, passed in February, could be a financial oasis — especially for an industry facing a precipitous drop in tech spending by economically ravaged corporations and consumers.
It allocates tens of billions of dollars for tech upgrades to energy ($4.5 billion for smart grids), health care ($20 billion for electronic medical records), broadband deployment and education.
The dizzying amounts have tech giants jockeying to land government contracts, the first expected to be awarded in the next few weeks. IBM, General Electric, Cisco Systems, Intel and some well-positioned start-ups are among suitors poised to capitalize.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime deal,” says Sean Maloney, chief sales and marketing officer at Intel, which is working on broadband projects with governments in the U.S., Japan, Vietnam and others. “This dwarfs the Marshall Plan and the New Deal. It is unimaginably large, and will never happen again. It is incumbent on us to spend it wisely.”
Technology firms are far from the only companies that will be looking for every viable means to access the $787 billion in Stimulus money that is just beginning to flow to government buyers nationwide. At a time when belts are tightening around the world, an unprecedented amount of money is going to be infused into the public sector.
In the past, many suppliers of all sizes have ignored government business simply because of the costs and uncertainty associated with bidding in the public sector. In the sealed paper bidding environment, suppliers spend hours putting together a bid response package dozens or even hundreds of pages long, and at the end of the process, suppliers have the opportunity to enter only one price. Suppliers have no idea about their standing until all prices have been submitted and no more bids can be placed.
A supplier can be $50 behind first place on a $500,000 project and not have the chance to compete further for the buyers business. It is also a common occurrence to overestimate the competition and leave thousands of dollars on the table simply because a supplier has by far the best price.
The combination of the current economic times and the passage of the Stimulus package has made it impossible for suppliers of any size to ignore business in the public sector any longer, and whether a supplier is experienced or not in dealing with public buyers, BidBridge facilitates the process doing business with government buyers.
First, by registering with BidBridge, suppliers become a part of a pool of 3,000 suppliers nationwide. When a new bid comes to BidBridge, our operations team combs our database for suppliers qualified to compete for the contract. Suppliers are automatically notified of opportunities of interest. This helps to minimize the sales acquisition costs of tracking down government business. BidBridge has worked with over 400 public sector buyers nationwide, so any supplier that registers will be exposed to a large footprint of government business.
BidBridge’s dynamic bidding environment also affords suppliers the opportunity to compete for a buyer’s business in real time. In contrast with the static, one price response of the paper bidding process, BidBridge’s platform allows suppliers to see how they stand in regards to competition and place multiple bids under sealed cover in an effort to earn the contract. Gone are the days of leaving money on the table by bidding too low or losing contracts by a fraction of a percent because only one price can be submitted.
BidBridge buyers are already planning Stimulus projects, so register as a BidBridge supplier today to access a tool that will help you capture as much Stimulus business as possible.
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER
On the part of many buyers, there is still concern over the legality of reverse auctions in public purchasing, in spite of the fact that BidBridge has run successful reverse auctions in 29 states across the U.S. BidBridge shares your concern of legality, but believes that reverse auction is a tool that should be a part of every public purchasing process as a way to ensure transparency and competition in bids that fit the process.
At the federal level, the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) provide for the acceptance of formal bids and quotes online, including via reverse auction as issued in March of 2005, in Subpart 4.5 of FAR. In February 2007, the Integrated Acquisition Environment quarterly included an article entitled “Spotlight on Reverse Auctions.” The following excerpt details the legality of reverse auctions in public purchasing:
“The concept of a ‘reverse auction’ has been around for some time. However, until the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) was changed in 1997 to allow their use and web-based software applications were developed to facilitate their utility, reverse auctions were unavailable to the federal buyer.
Within the framework of federal procurement a reverse auction is a pricing tool, the main goal of which is to drive purchase prices downward. It’s the type of auction which the role of the buyer and seller are reversed. In a traditional auction, contractors compete for the award of a contract. Today, reverse auctions offer the ability to conduct real-time price competitions within hours. The process allows the government to reveal each offeror the prices offered by all other offerors (anonymously). Offerors then have the chance to continually revise their prices as each revision is revealed to all of the other offerors. The process is repeated until all offerors stop “bidding” or until the auction closes.”
Here is a link to the complete FAR document
“Spotlight on reverse auctions” (IAE)
Just as competition is the “cornerstone” of the public acquisition system, as outlined in the Office of Management and Budget’s memorandum to all Departments and Agencies, so too is competition the cornerstone of the reverse auction tool. BidBridge reverse auctions place a group of strategically sourced, qualified suppliers in a dynamic, competitive bidding environment in which they can work to earn the business of a buyer.
Please email us blog@bidbridge.com if you have any questions about the legality of reverse auctions in your home state.
REGISTER AS A BIDBRIDGE BUYER TODAY
The flow of billions of dollars into state and local government with the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is going put significant amounts of money into the hands of public buyers at a time when finances are tight across the board in the U.S. Consequently, the Federal Government, who is in charge of distributing funds and overseeing the way they are spent is putting a premium on responsible purchasing and good stewardship.
Even so, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is anticipating fraud at the public level to “continue to skyrocket”. Since 2003, public corruption cases have increased by more than half since to 2,500 pending investigations, according to FBI Director Robert Mueller:
“The unprecedented level of financial resources committed by the federal government to combat the economic downturn will lead to an inevitable increase in economic crime and public corruption cases,” Mueller said.
Anticipating this increase in public fraud, the FBI has stepped up its recruiting efforts to ensure that as much public corruption as possible is rooted out, and in April, the Senate is expected to vote on legislation to give $245 million to the FBI to investigate exactly that kind of fraud.
The eye on public purchasing from both the federal level and the individual level has never been more watchful. Public buying, even when done efficiently and transparently, is going to be scrutinized extensively, and purchasing organizations are going to have to ensure that they are not only purchasing the right way, but also that they are able to demonstrate responsible purchasing readily.
For that reason, BidBridge’s reverse auction is tool perfectly suited for Stimulus spending. It allows the buyer access to a platform that generates maximum fair competition among a pool of qualified suppliers, resulting in true market value for purchases. Additionally, at the conclusion of a BidBridge reverse auction, buyers have immediate access to timely, transparent reporting that allows the buyer to make an educated decision to award quickly, and to communicate and justify the award decision to supervisors, suppliers, and the public.
REGISTER AS A BIDBRIDGE BUYER TODAY
CLICK TO READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE
The newly passed Stimulus bill includes a $5 billion fund to be distributed by the United States Department of Education, led by Secretary Arne Duncan. This fund is yet another step in the direction of making sure that money is distributed to entities that spend efficiently and pursue all viable tools that allow them to do so:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Education Secretary Arne Duncan says schools must make drastic changes to get money from a special $5 billion fund in the economic stimulus bill.
“We’re going to reward those states and those districts that are willing to challenge the status quo and get dramatically better,” Duncan said Monday at the White House.
Those who keep doing the same old thing, however, won’t be eligible for the money, he said.
Schools will be getting tens of billions more dollars through regular channels. On top of that, Duncan will have an unprecedented $5 billion to award for lasting reforms.
To get an award, schools and states must show they have been spending their money wisely.
CLICK TO READ THE FULL STORY
BidBridge’s reverse auction is a tool that truly fits with this philosophy of rewarding buyers who work to improve the way that business is transacted. It fits within the requirements of public purchasing, and it allows buyers to work hand in hand with BidBridge’s operations team that is experienced in purchasing at the public level.
BidBridge strategically sources suppliers at the direction of the buyer to ensure maximum, fair competition among suppliers.
The competition is further enhanced when the suppliers are allowed to place multiple bids in a dynamic environment, rather than place a single bid in the static paper bidding process.
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER AS A BUYER TO REALIZE THE REWARDS OF A DYNAMIC BIDDING TOOL
Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board: The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board was created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to coordinate and conduct oversight of funds distributed under this law in order to prevent fraud, waste and abuse. The Board includes a Chairman, Earl E. Devaney, appointed by the President, and ten Inspectors General specified by the Act. The Board has a series of functions and powers to assist it in the mission of providing oversight and promoting transparency regarding expenditure of funds at all levels of government. Quarterly and annual reports on the use of Recovery Act funds and any oversight matters will be issued as part of the Board’s work. The Board may also make recommendations to agencies on measures to avoid problems and prevent fraud, waste and abuse. To address issues quickly, the Board may send Flash reports to the President and Congress on potential management and funding problems that require immediate attention. The Board is also charged under the Act with establishing and maintaining a user friendly website, Recovery.gov, to foster greater accountability and transparency in the use of covered funds.
| Recovery Accountability and Transparency Act Board |
| The Honorable Earl E. Devaney |
Chairman |
| The Honorable Phyllis K. Fong |
Inspector General Department of Agriculture |
| The Honorable Todd J. Zinser |
Inspector General Department of Commerce |
| The Honorable Gregory H. Friedman |
Inspector General Department of Energy |
| The Honorable Daniel Levinson |
Inspector General Department of Health and Human Services |
| The Honorable Richard L. Skinner |
Inspector General Department of Homeland Security |
| The Honorable Glenn A. Fine |
Inspector General Department of Justice |
| The Honorable Calvin L. Scovel, II |
Inspector General Department of Transportation |
| The Honorable Eric M. Thorson |
Inspector General Department of Treasury |
| The Honorable J. Russel George |
Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration |
| Mary Mitchelson |
Acting Inspector General Department of Education |
RECOVERY.GOV’S INITIAL ANNOUNCEMENT
The passage of the ARRA has created a call for a level of transparency and reporting in public spending that is unprecedented. All agencies received Stimulus dollars will be required to closely track spending and report spending to not only the federal government, but also to the general public.
One key aspect of this communication with the public is the establishment of a web page on each agency’s website specifically devoted to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. In a memorandum sent out by the Office of Management and Budget, this requirement is detailed:
“To facilitate transparency and reporting, agencies should establish a page on their existing website dedicated to the Recovery Act (i.e., www.agency.gov/recovery), which will link to Recovery.gov and will provide a single portal for all agency-specific information related to the Act.”
HERE IS A LINK TO THE FULL MEMORANDUM
The following states and territories have already established Recovery sites (click the “View Site” link to go to each state or territory’s individual site):
CLICK FOR AN UPDATED LIST
If a state or territory does not appear on this list, they have not yet set up their Recovery site as of March 18, 2009.