I recently had a conversation with a bunch of members about having the right person or the right solution in place, and when the contract runs out, the government will go back and RFP it again. In certain circumstances there's an opportunity to roll over and add another two years. When we move to things like software as a service, do you want the contract to sunset and then go back out to tender with a new RFP if that software and everything is functioning properly? Can we not just roll that in, roll it over, and go for another two years using that solution? If everybody's satisfied with that, it's the best possible outcome. Why can't we do that rather than having to go back out for a full RFP again?
What ends up happening nine times out of 10—but it's probably closer to 99 times out of 100—is that if I have hired an IT consultant and he's doing a great job but I have to go back out to tender on an RFP, I'm wasting my time, the government's time, and the industry's time, because I will make sure that the only possible winner for this RFP process is this guy. I will make the experience requirements so drawn out and based on his experience that I'll make it prescriptive and only he can win, and when the rest of the industry looks at it, they wonder who could possibly satisfy these requirements.
There's a balance between rolling over.... Once I do a pilot, wouldn't it be great if we could just roll right into a contract? The pilot went great and we'd like to apply this over here, but we have to go back out for a full RFP again.
There is the opportunity to be able to do it. We do a $50,000 pilot, and if the pilot goes really well, we can open that up to a $100,000 contract. You can run on that. There's an opportunity to do it. There'll be resistance to it—legal, procurement, the rule books, the policies, the regulations—but we're starting to find out that not all those rules are written in stone.