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| Reading "requests for proposal"s (RFPs) can teach you a great deal by Commander Tansin A. Darcos 09/24/2014, 5:18pm PDT | ||||
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| I subscribe to and read Request For Proposal (RFP) documents published by various government agencies in order to discover what they are looking for as far as software solutions for their particular information problem.
For a lot of organizations they suffer from a huge inertia of long-term processing of information manually on paper, or partially automated on individual users PCs, but still leaving them with another problem: Information Silos, where various information an organization uses or needs is either trapped in inaccessible areas (such as when the work product is files stored on someone's PC) or is difficult to get to because its stored in older systems and/or proprietary technology. So when an organization like a city, county or state agency decides to move to a world-class solution for its need to modernize its processes and operations, they'll put out a Request For Information (RFI) when they aren't sure if there is a solution available and would like recommendations (usually from the vendors themselves) or a Request For Proposal (RFP) when they believe there is a solution and want one that implements the features that they believe are important. Reading an RFI or RFP can give you a great deal of information about what real customers with actual money, would like to see to "scratch their itch" of trying to find a way to increase automation, which makes people more efficient and thus can cut cost to get things done or allow more things to be accomplished with the same staff. For example, this item, is an RFP by the Office of the Attorney General of Arizona, where they want a web-based complaint system, allowing both OAGA employees and members of the public to post complaints about companies, products and services. This can improve how they can handle the items they are capable of processing, e.g. complaints about a firm outside of Arizona, complaints about an organization which is exclusively Federally regulated, ones so old the Statute of Limitations has passed, or which no violation of law can be proven are outside their bailiwick. But for the tens of thousands of valid complaints they do get each year an improved automated system would better allow them to handle the complaints and recognize duplicate or multiple complaints about the same matter as well as spotting organizations - businesses and companies, franchisors and service providers - who are getting lots of different, valid complaints. Basically what Arizona's OAG is looking for is something similar to what is already done with software bug tracking applications like Mantis or Bugzilla but with slightly different functionality. But it's interesting to read some of these because their own concerns about how their data is to be handled as well as what they want to be able to do in either an automated system or an improved automation system to what they are already running. For another example, this item is from the Commissioner of the Revenue of the City of Richmond, Virginia, in which they want to replace their existing system with something new that does a better job of handling things like collection of the property tax on automobiles as well as refunds, collection of property taxes on real estate, and other funds handling like business licenses, etc. Now, reading this RFP, it's too big for me to handle. (The City of Richmond mails over 500,000 tax bills a year, sends out about 400 refund checks a week (for some taxpayers like elderly people who qualify for a rebate) and collects over a billion dollars in personal and real property taxes annually. But the RFP allows me to lean about the kind of things someone buying a solution would expect.) Given that I can see there's a lot of interest in web-based solutions for cities, counties and misc organizations of that type, I'm working on one of my own to do a large part of this. (I mentioned some of this in two articles over at Jolt Country.) The program and system's name comes from the name of the fictional largest city in the fictional State of Winnemac, from Sinclair Lewis' 1922 book Babbitt and expanded upon in his later books including Arrowsmith. So I'm calling the program "City of Zenith" (here is a logo I designed for the system:)  and the intent is to take some existing packages that do some of the functions needed, plus add the missing pieces, and see about offering the solution to those interested, possibly even do some giveaways in order to get positive feedback from actual users who would then be willing to honestly say the solution gave them what they needed. (There are probably a lot of small to medium sized municipalities who'd want a software solution but can't afford it.) Having done that I can probably segue into getting paying customers. I'm figuring on using existing open-source software when it is available, e.g. it makes no sense designing a text editor for user comments when CKEditor is available, writing my own set of widgets when JQueryUI exists, or writing my own payroll, inventory or billing subsystem when these pieces already exist and can be adapted, possibly with just minor changes (like changing the user interface to make the whole thing look like a single integrated system). Some are BSD licensed but where necessary such as GPL I have no problem giving away the source code to those parts same as I was able to get them or to the extent I change them; the GPL only applies to that which is part of the original application; files that simply call other files through procedure calls or text inclusion are not covered under the GPL requirement to release code publicly.
I think there's money to be made in this solution package I am working on and I'm going to go about developing a solution for the target audience which I suspect can use it and very likely will pay good money for it. If the target environment is too big for me I'll see about partnering with someone who does this sort of thing but might not have a solution of their own. Or I could target a less expensive solution to smaller places who might be able to afford something and are not so large that I can't service them personally. |
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Reading "requests for proposal"s (RFPs) can teach you a great deal by 09/24/2014, 5:18pm PDT  Re: Reading "requests for proposal"s (RFPs) can teach you a great deal by 09/25/2014, 6:16am PDT |
