Following on from @sid_areta’s post, as I’m putting together the RFP, framework agreements and templates and have some relevant procurement experience, I thought it might be useful for me to respond to a few themes emerging here:
Mandate and Set-up of Independent Committee to Disburse Subsidies
The ADPC did discuss this in the beginning and the view was that having the ADPC establish the framework and administer the subsidy program was within the original mandate of the ADPC ultimately approved through governance.
This decision was not taken lightly. We carefully considered the original Snapshot and proposal as well as the significant workload involved and the resources within the team. It would have been far easier for us to handball this to someone else with the risk it falls into a hole at the end of the 6 month tenure. It did not strike any of us as good stewardship or professionalism.
The concern we have in bringing a new committee onboard is that (A) it creates a new workstream that was not part of the original mandate and, (B) even if we got a new committee spun up, would result in significant delays while new team gets voted in, briefed on the procurement strategy, wraps their head around the legalities of the framework agreement, state of negotiations, tools and processes etc. That’s 4-6 weeks of their 8 week sprint gone.
If the DAO supports a truncated proof-of-concept, the better “bang for buck” would be to let the current ADPC facilitate this first tranche, re-assess at the end of the POC and then feed the learnings into a more substantial program. There is a lot of upside doing it this way.
Addition of a Security Expert
The ADPC identified this as a critical requirement early on. We have been in contact with several organisations and individuals who might be able to assist. However one challenge has been identifying suitable SMEs who are not already conflicted out or who might be seen to be biased. Both of these factors knock out many candidates.
Alternative Approaches
Having run a lot of procurements both in government and the private sector, best practice involves establishing a core team consisting of strategic procurement specialists driving the Approach-to-Market and lawyers experienced in strategic sourcing. We believe we have those resources on hand.
Technical SMEs certainly have an important role to play in defining requirements, the technical evaluation criteria and evaluating RFP responses and we definitely want to include suitably qualified SMEs in that process. However the technical requirements are only one part of a procurement process and evaluation.
Given the problems flagged above in terms of conflicts of interest, one suggestion offered to the ADPC was to speak with experienced buyers of audit services so we are exploring that option as well.
Timeline and Sequence of Events
As can be seen from the ADPC Dashboard, the ADPC has made great progress on significant pieces of the Framework. We have already released the first draft of the Means Test and the related Terms and Conditions. This alone was a considerable piece of work - we hope this serves as a role model for other grant programs.
The first draft of the Procurement Framework is being currently reviewed internally, pending input from SMEs and the Foundation. Once those steps are completed, we’ll be ready to publish the RFP and Head Agreement and officially kick off the procurement stage. We know everyone is super keen to get this ball rolling however we only have one chance to get it right. Once the RFP is published, it is inadvisable to make changes as it creates havoc for respondents and undermines probity of the process.
As part of the publication step, we’ll be developing a TLDR and overview to the legal documents to assist all participants. Keep an eye out for updates!