Taking care of business

Local governments spend billions of dollars each year procuring goods and services, but their procurement processes can be complex and time consuming. To simplify and improve the City of Chicago's procurement processes, Civic Consulting Alliance, Jan Nicholson and Dykema Gossett PLLC helped the Chicago Department of Procurement Services to streamline contract forms and identify opportunities across three large departments to deliver payments more rapidly to vendors.

The changes are expected to decrease costs and improve the quality of city services by increasing competition among vendors for city contracts. Lessons learned are being shared region-wide through coordination with a 60-member group of procurement executives from city, county, state, and federal governments.

As Chicago helps all vendors-especially small and medium-sized businesses-to do business with the City, its procurement costs are expected to decrease. Says Chicago's chief procurement officer Jamie Rhee, "Our partnership with CCA accelerated our progress in streamlining regional procurement beyond what would have been possible on our own. This work will produce savings and more equitable processes, which will have a positive impact on our region for the years to come."