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On his first day in office, President Obama confirmed that fair,open and transparent would be the guiding principles in his administration. He also announced that Freedom of Information legislation would be used to release information, not withhold it.
President Obama's statements reflect the public's increasingly skeptical view that 'fair,open and transparent' are only words often ignored and forgotten by government officials.
This book leads the reader through the entire Request for Proposal process and provides best practices from more than sixty jurisdictions. Based on my experience as an independent consultant specializing in public procurement and the RFP process, these best practices have emerged as practical methods for building 'fair,open and transparent' into public procurement. While most of the citations are from the U.S., best practices are also found in other jurisdictions with similar public policies. Consequently, there are examples form Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom.
This book was first published in 1995. Since then, it has been expanded and revised every five years (in 200, 2005 and now, in 2010). To date, more than 4000 organizations, primarily in the U.S. and Canada, have purchased this book. The most distant sale was to a hospital in Qatar.
This books is intended to provide readers with:
- A detailed view of the entire RFP process and its variation
- Specific real world examples of how each step in this process has been implemented
- Introduction to best practices found in more than sixty different jurisdictions
- In revising this, the Fourth Edition, I have:
- Updated all of the material
- Updated all the citations and, for most, provided web addresses for each citation, about 75 in number.
- Greatly expanded the index to make it easier to search text dealing with a specific topic
In revising this text, I identified a number of issues that were important but often neglected in similar texts. By the time I finished this revision, I had accumulated a list of more than twenty topics which I decided could be best dealt with in a separate book which will be published later this year. These topics included:
- Using a draft RFP
- Handling unsolicited proposals
- Using a fairness officer
- Yes, RFPs for software are different!
This new book entitled Often Neglected (But Important) RFP Issues is scheduled to be published in September, 2010.
Thank you for your support and encouragement in producing this, the Fourth Edition, of this handbook. As always, comment, suggestions and your views on any topic are greatly appreciated. Simply call me at (604) 530-7881 or email me at michael@rfpmentor.com.
Best regards,

Michael Asner,
May 2010

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