The practice of posting bids on the Internet has exploded in the last 5 years. Today:

• The Internet is the sole, official bid publishing medium for the federal government.
• 45 of the 50 states, or 90%, publish bidding opportunities on the Internet.
• 46 of the top 50 cities, or 92%, publish bidding opportunities on the Internet.
• 36 of the top 50 counties, or 72%, publish bidding opportunities on the Internet.

We've owned and operated a bid opportunity search engine called Bidengine for about 5 years. Bidengine indexes and allows customers to search all of the federal, state and local public bid opportunity Web pages we've identified through our own in-house research. In all, Bidengine indexes about 4,000 public bid pages.

Through the development and maintenance of that product, and by talking to government buyers and vendors, we've believe developed a few "best practices" ideas over the years. We'd like to share some of them with you here.

Varying Degrees of Technical Sophistication

Agencies posting bids on the Internet do so with varying degrees of technical sophistication, depending on available dollars and technical resources. At the sophisticated end of the spectrum, bid posting systems have the following characteristics.

• Bids are contained in a database with user-friendly entry to the information. Bid descriptions provide links to detailed bid documents available in .doc, pdf, or HTML formats.
• Bids are automatically emailed to vendors who sign up for selected categories of products/services.
• All solicitation documents are posted to the site and vendors are automatically notified of amendments by email.
• Awards are publicly posted using the same system, and award documents are tied electronically to the original solicitation document.

At the less sophisticated end of the spectrum, agencies post a bid summary table with the most recent bids appearing first. For each bid, the table usually contains a bid identification number, bid description, and the buyer's name and contact information. Expired bids are archived in a separate document for vendor access.

With the least sophisticated systems, agencies post little more than bid titles and closing dates.

Outsourcing Bid Posting

A few smaller agencies with limited resources (and even a few larger ones) use private sector firms to post their bids.

Private sector bid posting services allow a buyer to use an online form to post bids to the services' online bid database. An agency may elect to publish a link to the bid database at its own Web site.

The problem with such services is that the agency gives up some degree of control over its data to an outside party. This can make technical managers and other officials nervous. It's the same problem that has plagued ASPs (Application Service Providers) in the private sector.

Free lunches on the Web having all but disappeared, an agency using private sector bid posting services must pay in some way. The most prevalent options are:

• The private sector firm charges vendors a bid document delivery fee. This payment method allows all interested vendors to see the bids for free and then only pay for bid documents if they're interested in pursuing an opportunity. The method works best for IFB-type procurements where signed bid documents are required.
• The vendor pays the private sector firm a transaction fee but only for winning bids. The vendor views bids without charge and pays only when actual business is transacted. This method works best when the system is a public, electronic marketplace with "bid back" capabilities.
• The private sector firm charges vendors a monthly subscription fee. This method tends to limit competition.

One might assume that vendors recoup their fees by increasing prices to the agency. But that's not always the case. The vendor may elect to keep prices the same because of reduced sales costs. Hopefully, too, the agency experiences a reduction in procurement processing costs, along with lower vendor prices through increased competition. Ideally, all costs considered, the agency comes out ahead.

Bid Posting Thoughts

Whether an agency builds its own bid posting system, or outsources to an outside party, here are some thoughts or tips based on what we've learned:

• Remember that a majority of prospective vendors are small businesses that are technically unsophisticated and require the simplest, user- friendly presentation for public bids.
• Post a link to bidding opportunities on your agency's home page (and purchasing page) and allow vendors quick and easy access to bidding opportunities from this link.
• Maintain a current bids page and an archived bids page. Once bid notices become old (i.e., after the due date) move the old bids to the archive page.
• Maintain contract award notices on a separate page.
• Don't hide bids behind a vendor registration page. Make the registration process (if one is required) a part of the bidding process after a vendor has seen the bid.
• Don't charge vendors to see solicitations. If funds are required to support Internet bid posting, make the payment process part of vendor registration.
• Don't use a proprietary product/service coding system that requires a subscription to use the system.

Example Sites

The Ventura County, California Procurement Department does a nice job of posting bid notices. You can find the site here: http://www.ventura.org/gsa/bid/bidlists.htm.

It has what we call a classic look: a table providing the basic -- but most important -- bid information. In this case:

1st column: Due date
2nd column: Solicitation number
3rd column: Solicitation title
4th column: Agency name
5th column: Responsible buyer

Within the solicitation column the county provides links to the solicitation, addenda and other specification documents. The documents are made available in .pdf format. There's no registration form to fill out before accessing these documents. As long as they have the free Adobe Acrobat Reader loaded onto their computers, interested vendors can instantly have a look at the details.

A click on the buyer link at the top takes you to a page with buyer contact information: names, titles, phone numbers and email addresses.

It's quite well done. The information is set out in a simple intuitive format, and it's all right there in front of you.

Our only criticism is that the county keeps its old bids up on this page. The oldest bid had a due date of August 3, 2001. We're biased on this issue (because old bids adversely affect our Bidengine product), but we think it's best to move old bids to a separate archive page.

Another nice site is Charleston County, South Carolina Procurement Department, Procurement Department, http://www.charlestoncounty.org/index2.asp?p=/departments/Procurement/curren t_bids.htm. Bids aren't formatted into columns but rather in individual "squares" listed vertically. Information for each bid includes:

• Solicitation due date
• Description
• Availability date
• Pre-bid conference address

One quibble we have with Charleston County's site: vendors must fill out online forms to request solicitation documents.

Another nice-looking, functional site is the District of Columbia's Office of Contracting and Procurement, http://www.ocp.dcgov.org/information/scf/SolNumRespond.asp. It's well done, worth checking out.

Bidengine.com

We mentioned Bidengine, a procurement search engine that allows customers to search thousands of federal, state and local public bid opportunity web pages. This is a popular vendor product, but government procurement folks find it useful, too. It's a great tool for quickly seeing what colleagues are up to. Free trials are available here: http://www.fedmarket.com/bidProducts/be/freeTrial/index.php