Press Releases
Montgomery County Office of Procurement Digitized Bidding System Wins National Association of Counties Award
For Immediate Release: Friday, July 7, 2023
The Montgomery County Office of Procurement won a National Association of Counties (NACo) Award for the Digitization of County Contracting in the County Administration and Management category.
NACo is an organization that represents county governments in the United States. It works to advance excellence in public service.
Until recently, the County’s Office of Procurement utilized paper-based methods to manage procurement actions for more than 2,600 contracts, totaling goods and services valued at more than $1 billion annually. Due to the unforeseen urgency brought on by COVID-19, paper-based methods of submitting and receiving bids were no longer possible.
To improve the system, technical and operational staff fast-tracked the development and implementation of an e-bidding system to accept responses to solicitations online. These efforts were fully developed and maintained with existing staff at no cost and implemented within one year.
During the last Fiscal Year the Office of Procurement, for the first time, had more new vendors than previous or established vendors. This achievement highlights their improvements of digitization and has opened the processes to more vendors, especially local and minority owned companies.
“Our Office of Procurement continues to improve service for those who bid for contracts with the Montgomery County government,” said County Executive Marc Elrich. “Over the last four years, our Office of Procurement has substantially increased our purchasing and contracting with more local, minority, as well as woman, and disabled- owned businesses. By modernizing procurement processes from paper to digital, our procurement efforts have become easier, more equitable and business-friendly resulting in potentially more bids and lower prices for higher quality services. I congratulate the Office of Procurement on their successes and this well-deserved NACo Achievement Award.”
The digitization of procurement processes as compared to paper processes makes it easier for smaller companies to bid because smaller businesses may not always have the resources or personnel to fill out paper forms as easily as large vendors.
Through the process of digitizing County contracting, Procurement continues to achieve its goal of promoting transparency and efficiency through web-based solutions that produce time, money and paper savings.
“Not only was working with paper contract files impractical for telework during the pandemic, it is also fundamentally inefficient for information sharing, storage and retrieval,” said Procurement Director Ash Shetty. “Although this endeavor required painstaking effort on the part of the team, it will allow for much more efficiency and flexibility in the long run.”
Digitizing procurement includes the entire procurement process, from submitting bids to maintaining large contract folders and relevant documents. Through this tool, users have become more efficient and are ultimately able to increase response time, both internally between staff and externally with customers and the vendor community. Digitizing procurement also significantly reduces carbon footprint by eliminating paper and the need for vendors to drive to the Procurement office.
“Members of the County’s Office of Procurement, including Mr. Shetty, regularly attend our Montgomery County Small Business Association events,” said President of the Montgomery County Small Business Association Ken O’Connell. “They continuously engage with our members, listen to their concerns and ideas and are swift to implement key changes in the County’s procurement processes, one of which was to implement electronic submissions. This change helps businesses, especially small businesses, to respond to County procurements more economically and efficiently.”
One staff member joined a 10-member group of County employees who developed, piloted and assessed the County’s “MCG Delivers Mentoring Program.” The program also won a NACo Award for the Office of Human Resources in the Personnel Management, Employment and Training category.
Digitization now allows Procurement to use A.I. to better analyze their processes for continued future improvements in processes and customer service.
The Office of Procurement has received 13 NACo awards in the last 15 years; nine of which were earned in the past four years.
Learn more about the Office of Procurement at www.montgomerycountymd.gov/pro.
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Media Contact: Bethany Manimbo 240-777-9941
Categories: Business