This is a brief overview of our findings. For comprehensive details, implementation guidance, and the complete research methodology, download the full report and view the report on NASCIO’s website.
Government technology procurement has been stuck in a cycle of inefficiency for too long. New RFPs are often created by simply tweaking the last one issued, with neither IT teams nor procurement teams having the bandwidth to consider if these de facto templates actually meet vendors' needs.
The result? A frustrating experience for everyone.
After researching how vendors feel about those standard templates, NASCIO and U.S. Digital Response have identified a lightweight intervention that could make a significant difference: a simple summary sheet that puts key information right where vendors need it.
A simple solution: The summary sheet
Our research found that a chief complaint of vendors is that the information that they need to rapidly evaluate RFPs is scattered throughout the lengthy documents, turning a quick decision into an arduous Easter egg hunt. So why not gather those together and list them right up front in an RFP? This is how we created the “summary sheet,” a simple, one-page template that provides an at-a-glance summary of an RFP.
We tested out the summary sheet on vendor employees, who all agreed that it made it much faster to decide if an RFP was worth their time.
When we started out in search of this solution, we knew our end result needed to be simple - but our path there would be complex. This work involved extensive research with the people who navigate RFPs every day.
The RFP: A maze for vendors
We surveyed NASCIO’s corporate members, who reported that they review up to 10,000 RFPs annually. Yet 70% of these RFPs aren't something they'd plausibly bid on. For a quarter of vendors, that number jumps to 90% irrelevance. That’s a lot of time spent trying to find diamonds in the coal heap. Smaller vendors don’t have that kind of time, which means some government RFPs will never be seen by vendors that might have been ideal for the work.
"It's so difficult to find top-line information within the RFP that they find it easier to feed it to an LLM to interrogate than to hunt down things like what the solicitation is actually for," noted one participant, highlighting how some smaller vendors are turning to AI tools like ChatGPT just to make sense of dense solicitations.
What’s more, 68% of respondents reported getting government RFPs from other vendors rather than from government channels, and half reported that RFPs only "sometimes" or "rarely" include a cover letter explaining the solicitation's purpose. Vendors are learning to route around the government's inefficient distribution and inaccurate targeting of RFPs.
What vendors actually need
Through interviews with the frontline vendor employees who evaluate new solicitations, we identified ten basic facts vendors look for—but these are typically scattered across dozens or hundreds of pages, if present at all:
- Clear problem statement
- Defined scope of work
- Submission criteria and requirements
- Budget information
- Project timeline
- Submission deadlines
- Minimum vendor qualifications
- Evaluation criteria
- Contract terms (especially concerning liability)
- Technical requirements
When asked to grade how easily they could find the most important information in our sample solicitation, interviewees provided an average grade of D+.
Research driven solutions for easy deployment
It was based on those findings that we created the one-page "summary sheet" containing the most crucial information vendors need for their initial evaluation. When we tested this prototype with vendors, the response was enthusiastic:
"This would be a dream," said one participant.
"Everything was laid out nicely and everything I look for was there right off the bat," noted another.
"It took me maybe three minutes to find my top three things that I'm looking for, which is unusual," shared a third participant.
After concluding our research, we offer two straightforward recommendations:
- Attach a summary sheet to software solicitations immediately after the cover sheet, and complete it entirely. If any information required for the summary sheet isn't available, the solicitation isn't ready to be published. Publishing without that information forces vendors to price for uncertainty, driving up bids.
- Treat the table of contents as a summary of the solicitation. Don't rely on auto-generated tables. Use plain language for section titles, avoid legalese or agency-specific jargon, ensure the layout isn't crowded, and make the font large and easy to read. Every entry should link to its location within the document.
This work is by no means complete. We've uncovered the need for substantial additional research, including further validation of what information to include in the summary sheet, better understanding of agencies' capacity to provide this information, and documentation of how this process can improve solicitations beyond just software.
What's clear is that this simple intervention—a standardized summary sheet—can dramatically improve the procurement process, helping vendors quickly identify suitable opportunities and helping agencies receive higher-quality responses.
By making these small but significant changes, government agencies can attract more qualified vendors, receive more competitive proposals, and ultimately deliver better technology solutions for the public they serve.
Download the full report to access these resources and learn how your agency can improve its procurement processes today.
