North Texas Lands New Procurement Tech for Local Agencies

A new procurement push in one of the most populated areas of Texas aims to inject AI into the government supply process and open more contracts to businesses owned by minorities.

Civic Marketplace, a government technology supplier also based in the state, has teamed with the North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) to offer a procurement platform for the group’s members.

The council covers 16 counties in and around the Dallas-Fort Worth metro. Civic Marketplace, meanwhile, has raised more than $3 million since its founding in 2023, according to PitchBook.

The company’s platform, according to the statement announcing the deal, offers a streamlined procurement process that can make it easier for local public agencies to ink cooperative purchasing contracts, as well as meet compliance requirements and offer better transparency.

Cooperative contracting continues to drive investment and partnerships among gov tech firms. Suppliers of procurement tools are racing to build larger contract databases that offer a central source for tech buyers from public agencies, along with more opportunities to “piggyback” onto existing purchasing agreements, potentially saving time and money.

“We see tremendous value in the cooperative purchasing idea,” Jonathan Blackman, the council’s chief operations manager, told Government Technology*, adding that the deal could help NCTCOG expand its membership.

The deal includes access to Civic Marketplace’s search features, which are “powered” by artificial intelligence and designed to help users “find, evaluate and implement the contracts and tools they need,” according to the statement.

The platform also includes tech that helps users comply with laws and rules surrounding government procurement and the transparency of that process — a process that sometimes takes six months and 500 hours to complete under older systems, Al Hleileh, the vendor’s co-founder and CEO, told Government Technology.

“Our view is that cooperative purchasing is the future,” he said.

The partnership could especially help smaller public agencies in the region, operations that lack the tech expertise and workforce often found in larger local governments — agencies that include not only municipalities and counties but school and special districts.

“The rest of the folks are struggling to play catch-up,” Hleileh said.

Such tools could also make it easier for smaller businesses, and those owned by women and minorities, to make more of a play for government contracts, he said.

That reflects another burning issue in procurement, one that stands alongside cost concerns and worries about being able to manage increasing project volumes, according to a recent survey report.

*This story first appeared in Government Technology, sister publication to Industry Insider — Texas.