Every procurement is an opportunity! We founded Citymart in 2010 to raise the world’s expectations on city procurement. Our mission was to… — The Tipping Point In 2021, our board agreed that we had accomplished much of our mission, closed the organization, and open-sourced our methods. Our team has trained 3,000 public officials (and thousands more using our free Procurement Institute), and 135 governments on all continents have adopted our methods, with countless more replicating it…

Citymart BidSpark was an innovative market engagement technology and methodology to deliver transformative results. Here are some numbers. — Nashville Procurement Crowdfunding for Schools Results BidSpark recruited 10 bids and including one of the two winning solutions. Boston Procurement Senior Shuttle Scheduling Software Results BidSpark recruited 8 bids, including the winning vendor who delivered a cost saving of $268,000 (70%).

The Problem — The Problem Urban environments continue to be transformed by economic growth and technological advancement. The advent of online retail has led to a massive increase in deliveries in cities all over the world. In city centers, this positive development has also had negative consequences. The uptick in delivery activity has led to…

The Problem — The Problem As urban centers around the world increase in population and density, the waste produced in each city has also increased. Cities regularly encounter challenges related to their ability to scale waste collection, recycling and composting. Increased interest in sustainability has led cities to wonder how waste can be effectively diverted…

The Problem — The Problem The issues facing disadvantaged communities in a modern city are complex. Poverty, health, education, employment and crime are interrelated, but in many municipalities, responsibility for programs that address these issues is spread across multiple public and private stakeholders. The atomization of public services has led cities like Dallas, Texas to…

10 years ago we published a handbook on service innovation in cities and the frustration that great solutions didn’t succeed. Did it hold? — 10 years ago we published a handbook on technology-enabled service innovation in cities and a frustration shared across the field that meaningful things just weren’t taking off. Here is what happened to some of our key ideas. Why, have highly valued services like mobile parking, tourism, or solutions for…

Very few venture capitalists want to fund startups to work with local government. The main reason? Procurement. — This post was first published on Citymart in March 2018 by Shaun Abrahamson, Managing Partner for Urban Us. Lots of government officials want to work with startups. Lots of startup founders want to work with local governments. But very few venture capitalists want to fund startups to work with local…

We read every procurement you published in 2019. Here is what we found out about innovation, entrepreneurship, diversity & some quick fixes — We know almost nothing about how our city halls spend trillions of dollars every year on the services that shape our lives — like our health, education, environment, transport and culture. What we do know is that things aren’t all great — critical problems like homelessness, air quality and inequities…