How to find proposals for past RFP?
April 25, 2010 9:20 AM   Subscribe

Is it possible to find proposals that have been submitted to past RFP, including the winning bid/proposal?

I'm in the process of writing a proposal for a RFP regarding providing language translation services in New York State. This is for a contract that is renewed every 5 years.

I'm wondering if all proposals/bids that have been received for the last RFP for this particular job is in public domain? If so where can I find them?

I've tried searching New York State Contract Reporter, the official online procurement bulletin for New York State, but no luck so far.
posted by pakoothefakoo to Work & Money (6 answers total)
 
I'm a buyer for the Defense Department. We release winning bidder info only. It's not the whole proposal, only award info. A FOIA request might get you a list of offerors. We'd never release non-winning proposals as they are proprietary.
posted by fixedgear at 9:32 AM on April 25, 2010


Yeah, public domain is out, because all proposals contain proprietary information. Even if you are able to get proposals through a FOIA request, the companies that provided them can black out anything in their proposals that they deem proprietary, which means you'll get documents with lots of blank spaces. Probably wouldn't be helpful, although I'm not really sure from your question why you want to see these documents in the first place.
posted by JanetLand at 12:34 PM on April 25, 2010


OP wants to see proposals so s/he knows what to charge.
posted by fixedgear at 12:58 PM on April 25, 2010


My husband says:

Bid openings are generally open to the public, and would usually announce the name of the bidder and the amount bid. Since they're open to the public to demonstrate fairness one would assume the results of the opening can be requested. As for the contents of the bid, anyone who knows what they're doing will be sure to indicate the contents are confidential/proprietary, so it's very unlikely you'd get any more information than that.
posted by Herkimer at 5:56 PM on April 25, 2010


If you subscribe to Onvia or one of the other major RFP identification services, you may be able to look up the award info through their database, but it would probably only tell you the prime contractor and possibly the contract amount.
posted by carmicha at 8:35 PM on April 25, 2010


Response by poster: Yeah, I want to find the older RFP, see what the target price was and the bids for comparison.

I'll check out Onvia.

Thanks
posted by pakoothefakoo at 9:21 PM on April 25, 2010


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