In 2015, the Chicago Procurement Reform Task Force (PRTF), comprised of the City of Chicago
and a number of its sister agencies, undertook a six-month project to identify opportunities for local
governmental entities to implement best practices for public contracting. PRTF reported its findings
and made 31 recommendations. Pursuant to an intergovernmental agreement (IGA), the entities
involved (collectively, the Participating Members) launched a responsive reform process. Over the
past seven years, they have completed work on 28 of the 31 recommendations made by PRFT. The
three recommendations which have not been implemented were critical to PRTF’s mission and
goals: to create a single website providing contracting information and guidance from all
Participating Members; adopt best practices for routine audits of procurement processes, ideally
using shared services to that end; and implement a universal procurement system—a single point
of entry for posting and responding to all Participating Members’ contacting opportunities.
In November 2022, a committee comprising Chief Procurement Officers of the involved agencies
(CPO Committee) issued a “Close-Out and Status Report” announcing the termination of the PRTF
project. Regarding the three incomplete recommendations: (1) the CPO Committee states the
website has launched, but it has not*; (2) the Committee asserts without substantiation that the
Participating Members have done as much as they can to implement effective audit practices; and
(3) the Committee concludes that a universal procurement system is unachievable due to lack of
funds and differing governance rules and regulations, but does not explain how and why the
considerable efforts on this front described in its prior public reporting have failed to come to
fruition.
In accordance with its legal mandate, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) publishes this
independent evaluation of the progress of the Participating Members’ implementation of PRTF’s
recommendations.
Read the full OIG PRTF evaluation here.
*Read the Post-Close-out Update March 2023 here.