Procurement paths for government technology purchasing
Contents
Cooperative purchasing
Piggybacking
RFI
RFP
RFQ
Sole source
Procurement staff, IT directors, and department heads have more ways to buy technology than the one or two paths that readily come to mind. You don’t have to use a certain purchasing motion just because that’s how it’s always been done — and in most cases, more than one of those paths can lead to an effective, compliant government technology purchasing decision. Choosing the right one(s) can significantly reduce timelines, administrative burden, and risk.
In this quick guide, we’ll cover multiple procurement routes: cooperative purchasing, piggybacking, RFIs, RFPs, RFQs, and sole source. Some are designed for speed. Others prioritize control, competition, or documentation. Each comes with tradeoffs that affect how quickly you can move and how well your decision holds up.
Some of these function well on their own, but your agency may want or need to use multiple of these options in making a purchasing decision. Start with the path(s) that align with your situation:
1. Cooperative purchasing: Your fastest path to a technology purchase
If you work in a city, county, or state agency and need to buy technology without spending months on a formal bidding process, cooperative purchasing is often your best starting point. The core idea is simple: A lead agency or national cooperative organization — like Sourcewell, NASPO ValuePoint, or OMNIA Partners — runs a rigorous competitive solicitation on behalf of thousands of agency members. Once a cooperative awards a vendor, any member can buy from that contract directly.
From your perspective as a buyer, that means the hard work is already done. The vendor has been vetted, pricing has been negotiated at scale (often better than you’d get solo), and the competitive process is fully documented and legally defensible.
To use a cooperative contract, you typically need to:
- Confirm your agency has an agreement or membership with the cooperative
- Find the contract covering your technology category
- Request a quote from the awarded vendor referencing the contract number, and issue a purchase order against it
In most jurisdictions, that single contract number satisfies your local competitive bidding requirements.
This path is especially valuable when your procurement team is small, your timelines are tight, or you’re buying well-established technology — software, hardware, and SaaS subscriptions — that doesn’t need heavy customization. What you give up in flexibility (the contract terms are fixed), you gain back in speed, lower administrative burden, and protection at audit. Before using a cooperative contract, always verify that your state or local statutes authorize this type of purchasing, and confirm the lead agency’s original solicitation was publicly posted and open to competition.
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Piggybacking: Borrowing a peer agency’s competitive work
Piggybacking is closely related to cooperative purchasing, but with an important distinction: Instead of using a contract that was designed for shared use from the start, you’re using a contract that another government agency competed for their own purposes. If a neighboring county just ran a strong competitive bid for a cybersecurity platform and you need the same thing, piggybacking may let you move forward without starting from scratch.
This path works well when you have a trusted peer agency whose procurement practices you respect, when the original contract is still active, and when the vendor agreed in the original solicitation documents to allow other agencies to use the contract. That last point is critical — you cannot assume piggybacking is permitted. It must be explicitly authorized in the original solicitation.
Your action steps start with obtaining and reviewing the host agency’s contract documentation.
- Confirm the original solicitation was publicly advertised and competitively awarded
- Check that your own state statutes permit intergovernmental piggybacking
- Execute an interlocal cooperation agreement between your agency and the host before issuing any purchase order
- Reference the host agency’s contract number on your PO and keep all documentation in your procurement file
There is some risk with piggybacking; the contract reflects the host agency’s requirements, not yours. You also carry more legal exposure than you would with a formal cooperative contract, since the multi-agency use wasn’t baked in from the beginning. Go in with your eyes open, involve your legal counsel early, and be prepared for more scrutiny if your purchase ever lands in an audit.
Learn more about efficiency and examine how to redesign procurement processes.
The RFI: A market research tool
A Request for Information (RFI) is not a buying event. No contract gets awarded, no vendor gets selected. But used strategically, it can be one of the most valuable steps in your entire procurement process, because it shapes everything that comes after.
Public sector buyers issue RFIs when they’re exploring a technology category they don’t fully understand yet, when leadership needs a market scan before committing budget, or when they need vendor input to write a smarter RFP.
The RFI lets you ask open-ended questions: What does your solution actually do? How have you implemented it for agencies like ours? What does a realistic implementation timeline look like? What should we be asking for that we’re not? Vendor responses give you a realistic picture of the market — what’s possible, average costs, and what’s still emerging.
From a practical standpoint, draft your questions with your eventual RFP in mind. Use the responses to refine your requirements, identify evaluation criteria, and understand the range of approaches vendors take. You’ll also quickly learn which vendors are thoughtful communicators and which recycle generic sales language — a useful signal for later.
A few things to watch for:
- RFI responses are non-binding, so treat capability claims as starting points to verify, not facts to rely on.
- Be careful not to use one vendor’s RFI response to write specifications that only that vendor can meet. This creates legal exposure when your RFP goes out and other vendors notice.
- Tell vendors honestly whether an RFP is planned to follow and on roughly what timeline. Vendors invest real time in responding, and transparency builds goodwill that makes the eventual competitive process run more smoothly.
The RFP: Owning the process
For large, complex, or high-visibility technology purchases, a full Request for Proposal (RFP) is often the right path. RFPs give your agency the control that other procurement vehicles don’t: You set the requirements, you define the evaluation criteria, and you choose the vendor that best fits your specific situation.
An RFP is the right tool when the stakes are high enough to justify the effort: a new enterprise platform, a major IT modernization, a system that is critical to your daily operations, will touch dozens of staff, or be used for years. It’s also the right path when you need to evaluate qualitative factors — implementation approach, vendor qualifications, vendor references, and post-go-live support — not just price. And it’s the most legally defensible option when you anticipate scrutiny, whether from leadership, a board, or the public.
Running a strong RFP starts long before you write a word of the document. Involve your end users and your IT team early to define requirements. Vague requirements produce disparate proposals that are incomparable, and incomparable proposals make selection nearly impossible to defend. When you draft the solicitation, be specific about what you need, clear about your evaluation criteria and their weights, and transparent about your timeline. Hold a pre-bid conference to answer vendor questions on the record, and document every decision your evaluation committee makes in writing.
Common mistakes to avoid:
- Writing specs that only one vendor can effectively meet (use the Sole Source path)
- Creating a draft that’s based on the technology you have now (and will get you more of the same)
- Evaluating on price alone when qualitative factors genuinely matter
- Rushing the response window to the point where only vendors who already know your agency well can respond competitively
A well-run RFP takes time, but the documentation it produces protects you at every stage after award.
The RFQ: When you know what you want and just need the price
A Request for Quotation (RFQ) is the most purchase-ready of the standard procurement tools. By the time you issue an RFQ, your requirements are fully defined. You know exactly what you’re buying, and you need competing vendors to tell you what it costs.
This is the right path for technology renewals, hardware refreshes with known specs, or purchases off a pre-existing schedule that just need a formal quote. It’s also appropriate when price is the primary differentiator and qualitative evaluation isn’t needed. (Use an RFQ when you’re confident the vendors you’re soliciting can all deliver, and the question is just which company is most affordable.)
The practical process for an RFQ is straightforward:
- Document your complete specification before you issue anything
- Send the RFQ to multiple vendors (three or more quotes are standard practice and provide cover at audit)
- Compare responses on price and delivery timeline
- Issue your purchase order to the selected vendor while retaining all quotes in your procurement file
The most important thing to understand about an RFQ is what it isn’t suited for. If what you’re buying isn’t largely ubiquitous and the same across vendors, you won’t be able to isolate price as the true determining factor.
If implementation quality, vendor support, or long-term partnership matter for this purchase, you need an RFP instead. And because vendor quotations aren’t binding offers, confirm pricing holds through to purchase order issuance — especially in a volatile market for hardware or licensed software.
Sole source: A legitimate last resort
Sole source procurement — awarding a contract to a single vendor without competitive bidding — is a valid and sometimes necessary tool. But it’s also the path most likely to create problems for public sector buyers who misunderstand what it’s actually for.
The legal standard is narrow: Sole source is appropriate when only one vendor can fulfill the requirement. That might be because the vendor holds proprietary source code or data that no one else can access. It might be because a genuine emergency doesn’t allow time for competitive bidding, or because the technology must integrate with an existing system in a way that only the original vendor can support. However, an existing integration with a specific vendor is, in itself, a weak justification; modern software vendors can integrate with one another.
What it is not: a way to move faster, to reward a vendor you already like, or to avoid the administrative work of a competitive process. Speed and preference are never valid justifications.
If sole source is genuinely appropriate, your job is to document everything. Your written justification needs to explain why competitive bidding is infeasible, which accepted legal criteria the situation meets, what market research you conducted to confirm no alternatives exist, and how you determined the vendor’s pricing is fair and reasonable. Sole source doesn’t mean you accept whatever number the vendor quotes. You still negotiate, and you still need to be able to show the price is justified.
A strong justification is short, specific, and focused on why no alternative exists.
Building procurement literacy for government technology purchasing
From choosing the best procurement path to drafting requests, buying government technology takes a deliberate approach. Take time upfront to think through the process, align on requirements, and ask the right questions.
The goal isn’t to memorize every rule. It’s to develop a practical understanding of how procurement works in your jurisdiction and to apply it intentionally each time you buy. Develop the ability to match the purchase to the right vehicle, understand the tradeoffs each path brings, and document decisions in a way that holds up under scrutiny.
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