Open Requirements

Modernized Procurement Workflow - Discovery Objectives

Creative Commons License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International

About the Open Requirements Library

The purpose of the Open Requirements Library is to utilize open and emerging technology to contribute to a more equitable government marketplace—one where solicitations are more easily understood and require less time in the acquisition life cycle.

Key performance results:

Fewer submitted solicitation questions
Fewer pre-award protests
Faster acquisition cycles
Create a more inviting marketplace to new entrants
Reduce dependency on input from incumbent vendors

Read more about the Open Requirements Library, and contribute your ideas.

Modernized Procurement Workflow - Discovery Objectives

Objectives to explore the implementation of an innovative, user-centered procurement workflow as a singular minimal viable product (MVP) with a limited budget.

Problem Statement

The seller experience for vendors is often deprioritized in public procurement processes, particularly in state and local government. Vendors invest significant time and resources to determine whether to bid on solicitations. A key determining factor as they juggle multiple bids is the investment it would take to submit versus the potential return on investment for the award. Vendors often encounter multiple outdated and proprietary systems, complex compliance requirements including numerous and separate form submissions, and solicitation documents that do not prioritize response criteria.

As a result, vendor pools can become limited to incumbents who are most familiar with the procurement system, rather than inviting new vendor talent and ideas into the vendor pool. This can limit the government’s potential for innovation, cost savings and risk mitigation.

The government, in turn, must expend resources and time to validate compliance for each submission. The more complex the requirements, the greater the effort is required for validation—especially when more than one platform and multiple files are required for submission.

Government leaders often recognize these barriers and are motivated to improve the procurement experience. However, they can be constrained by legacy systems, workflows and subscriptions, which can make transformation unclear and difficult.

Discovery

To bring clarity and traction to modernizing the procurement experience, the government requires an Agile-based and phased approach to discovery.

Phased discovery begins by asking the big questions:

How we might imagine the art of the possible?
How we might find creativity in our existing constraints?

“How-might-we” questions move into more open-ended and optimistic thinking that invites discovery and exploration, and can help facilitate open and candid conversations.

Here are some examples of “how-might-we” questions to explore in this process:

Understanding systems

How might we make the procurement and solicitation process more transparent and efficient for both agencies and vendors?
How might we enable agencies to modernize procurement practices while operating legacy and/or proprietary systems and potentially transitioning to modern and/or open source software solutions?
How might we design a phased roadmap that demonstrates progress within existing system constraints?

Understanding experience

How might we improve the experience so vendors can make faster bid/no-bid decisions?
How might we improve vendor support and communication throughout the end-to-end procurement experience?
How might AI bring efficiency to vendor support?
How might we improve the experience so vendors can submit clear and relevant proposals that require greater effort on the solution than submission compliance?
How might we activate AI to bring efficiency to submission compliance validation for the government?
How might we redesign solicitation structures and workflows to accessibility and equity?

Understanding our opportunities

How might we document and share the journey of procurement modernization in an open public repository (such as GitHub or GitLab) so other entities serving the public can learn from it?
How might we cultivate a learning culture around open documentation and design-in-the-open practices with procurement reform?

Assumptions

All artifacts, research, processes, flows, etc. will be shared in an open, public repository. Research insights will be anonymized and will not be attributed back to individuals.

Phase One: Current State Discovery

Period of Performance: 2.5 two-week sprints

Key Personnel:

Service Design Lead - The Service Design Lead directs the discovery and design effort, translating complex procurement and business development processes into clear, human-centered service models. They facilitate collaboration across stakeholders, guide research synthesis and blueprinting, and integrate AI tools ethically to accelerate insight generation and design delivery. A lead position requires at least five years of experience in public sector customer experience design, as well as experience in facilitation and design project coordination. Proficiency in USWDS and accessibility is also required.
User Experience (UX) Designer - The UX Designer supports research, documentation, and prototyping activities to visualize and validate improved procurement and business development experiences. They translate insights into user journeys, interfaces, and service touchpoints, ensuring clarity, usability, and alignment with the project’s open, human-centered goals. At least three years of experience is required in journey mapping, research synthesis, and systems design thinking.

The objective for Phase One of discovery is to understand the current state experience of the public procurement process from the vendor/industry perspective, while also building an understanding of systems and constraints on the government-side. The approach will also leverage AI (artificial intelligence) to analyze and synthesize feedback, documentation, and other relevant inputs, as well as optimize processes such as meeting note capture and summarization. Any AI process or output will be overseen and reviewed by our human experts to ensure accuracy, relevance, and quality.

What to Expect

Sprint Zero To ensure schedule and budget are adhered to, time will be scheduled initially to set alignment before the official first discovery week begins. Typically, a sprint zero can be one half of the normal sprint cycle (10 business days).

Conduct an alignment session with procurement team stakeholders
Identify and invite stakeholders who will be a part of the co-creation workshop at the end of week one
Align on project norms and co-creation strategies (not to exceed one hour per day for the duration of the phase with key decision makers)
Define AI use policy (what tools, what data, how outputs will be validated)
Confirm data and system access for the teams (what will they need access to)
Align on user research targets and recruitment protocols (ensure there will be no user research approval blockers before project start)

Week 1: Orientation & Framing

Kickoff with stakeholders (procurement leads, representative sample of vendor participants)
Define research questions around bid/no-bid pain points
Use AI to analyze prior solicitation documents and vendor support requests for patterns (e.g., common blockers, jargon complexity)
Co-creation workshop: “What if we redesigned the bid/no-bid decision?”
Progress on: Discovery plan and preliminary insights

Week 2: Current State Mapping

Conduct interviews with vendor participants and procurement officers
Map out the “as-is” vendor decision journey
Use AI to cluster and summarize qualitative themes
Progress on: Preliminary insights continued, user stories, SWOT analysis

Week 3: System Constraints & Opportunities

Continue current state mapping
Audit proprietary tools/workflows; document where openness or redesign could be introduced
Progress on: System opportunities matrix and additional artifacts

Week 4: Storytelling & Synthesis

Draft the narrative: “Documenting the journey to open procurement practices”
Build an open-model playbook prototype using AI to visualize a phased approach
Deliverable: Discovery narrative, service blueprint, user story database; project plan for Phase Two

Throughout this process, it is required to leverage AI to help synthesize anonymized insights, transcribe and analyze meeting notes and user interviews, and identify opportunities for optimization.

Phase Two: Open Service Design

The findings of Phase One will ultimately determine the best approach to Phase Two. Period of Performance: 2 two-week sprints

Key Personnel:

Service Design Lead - The Service Design Lead will direct the discovery and design effort, translating complex procurement and business development processes into clear, human-centered service models. They will facilitate collaboration across stakeholders, guide research synthesis and blueprinting, and integrate AI tools ethically to accelerate insight generation and design delivery. At least 5 years of experience in public sector customer experience design, as well as experience in facilitation and design project coordination. Proficiency in USWDS and accessibility is required.
User Experience (UX) Designer - The UX Designer will support research, documentation, and prototyping activities to visualize and validate improved procurement and business development experiences. They will translate insights into user journeys, interfaces, and service touchpoints, ensuring clarity, usability, and alignment with the project’s open, human-centered goals. At least 3 years of experience in prototyping, visual design, and systems design thinking.

Week 1: Opportunity Framing & Prioritization

Review Discovery insights and identify key service opportunity areas
Co-create with stakeholders: define service value propositions
Prioritize findings and new ideas into opportunity areas
Deliverable: Service Design Brief outlining 2–3 prioritized focus areas

Week 2: Concept Development & Mapping

Develop future-state journey maps and service blueprints
Identify human and AI touchpoints (e.g., automated intake triage, transparency dashboards)
Deliverable: Definition of Minimal Viable Product (MVP); concept blueprints and interaction flow mockups

Week 3: Co-Design and Rapid Prototyping

Facilitate virtual co-design sessions with vendor participants and procurement teams
Prototype 1–2 high-impact service moments as determined by the discovery research
Deliverable: Future state prototypes and user journey and/or system design flows

Week 4: Validation and Storytelling

Run lightweight usability testing or feedback sessions on prototypes
Develop the Phase 2 Playbook: “Building Open, Modern Procurement Services”
Deliverable: Service design presentation deck and phased roadmap for MVP pilot implementation

Throughout Phase One and Phase Two, it is important to work in close collaboration with stakeholders, ensuring there is continuous feedback, discussion, and information sharing, as well as opportunities to reflect and iterate on improvements.