Results-Driven Procurement & Contract Management

Overview

Many of the critical functions of state and local governments — from providing behavioral health services to housing the homeless — rely on contracting with social service providers. However, many procurement processes can stifle innovation and focus provider and government efforts on compliance rather than delivering more impact. 

The GPL’s Results-Driven Procurement & Contract Management approach helps governments leverage the power of procurement and purchase more responsive, effective services. These strategies include:  

• Engaging with community-based organizations to identify services gaps and potential solutions, and then incorporating their insights into solicitations.  
• Testing approaches to enable more proximate providers, which are service providers who reflect the communities they serve, to bid on and receive government contracts. Support includes identifying additional resources these providers need to pay for infrastructure or scale up their services. 
• Structuring solicitations to encourage innovation by defining the problem and inviting a range of ideas rather than prescribing narrow solutions.  
• Including performance metrics that measure whether the procured services are improving resident outcomes, rather than simply tracking outputs and activities. 
• Developing payment structures that incentivize better outcomes rather than mere delivery.  
• Establishing a collaborative performance management relationship between governments and service providers to find ways to continuously improve the impact of the services being delivered. 

Explore the GPL’s other strategic capabilities:

• Data-Driven Performance Management
• Human-Centered Service Systems