Our pursuit of innovation
When the City of Syracuse decided to overhaul and digitize its procurement system, the goal was to establish new ways of working with our vendors and present opportunities to do business with the City more broadly.
This journey wasn’t just about digitizing paper processes. It was about rethinking procurement as a strategic, responsive, and inclusive tool for good governance. And like any ambitious transformation in government, success depended less on the tool and more on the approach.
Here in Syracuse, we spend a big chunk of our budget on purchasing goods and external services: everything from office supplies to hiring consultants to audit a specific department, to multi-million dollar construction projects. Given that we are a major spender in our community, it's about time we take a long hard look at our procurement practices and ensure that we are cultivating vendor diversity, equitably distributing our resources, and continuously achieving improved outcomes.
