Phoenix Elementary School District #1 Meets DEI Goals with OpenGov Procurement

“We need to know that required business types are involved in our procurement processes when federal funding is involved. What I love about OpenGov is that it captures this data that we need to prove to auditors that we made affirmative steps,” said Monique Harris, Procurement and Materials Manager for Phoenix Elementary School District #1. “Now, I can easily show the number of vendors by classification type and the percentage of total vendors who are classified as certified small businesses, minority businesses, and many other categories.”

Previously, the procurement team had to pull together this data manually – and often it was not captured – which made both the audit and process for federally-funded RFPs much more challenging.

“With OpenGov we can capture the number of vendors by category, and share that data easily, which saves our team hours of time on reporting and assures compliance to federal code for reaching out to minority business owners,” described Harris. 

After over ten years in public procurement and project management, Harris was happily surprised that she was able to implement a modern system for managing the end-to-end process and reporting for the District’s RFPs in two months.  “We were able to hit the ground running by adapting  existing templates from other districts with the help of the OpenGov team,” Harris explained.

The benefit of a modern solution cannot be overlooked when it comes to attracting a more diverse supplier base. Making the process simpler reduces the barriers to entry for small and minority-owned businesses. “We are seeing an uptick in overall responses to our RFPs, especially from minority-owned businesses,” describes Harris.

In a recent Board Meeting to recommend vendors for District-paid student programs, Harris was able to easily share how each of the 17 vendors deemed acceptable were classified, which instilled greater trust in the procurement process and left more time and focus on consideration of the benefits to students.  

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