Throughout the public broadband planning process, a public entity may choose to use either a Request for Proposal (RFP) or Request for Information (RFI) process, or a combination thereof, to select vendors and/or project partners. Communities must always be aware of and follow their own state’s and local procurement and contracting processes before finalizing purchase or partnership arrangements. Most public entities use either RFPs or RFIs on a regular basis for all kinds of public construction and services.

These RFP/RFI tools may be useful during both planning and implementation phases. There are many examples online. In the planning phase, communities may be selecting vendors for surveys, marketing, engineering, and business planning, as well as selecting ISP partners. During implementation, there would be many selections of equipment vendors, contractors, and finance and marketing services.

In general, an RFP is a formal document that describes a project and desired services in detail to ensure a competitive bidding process. The RFP describes the necessary qualifications of prospective bidders, the overall project scope, specific work tasks, and required timelines. A bidder would describe their qualifications, previous relevant work experience, key staff dedicated to the project, hourly billing rates, and/or total price for the desired services.

The RFP would describe how projects would be evaluated and any scoring system. Once proposals are received, they are generally reviewed by an internal team, possibly assisted by an external advisory team, to independently score and evaluate the proposals. Cost may or may not be the most important scoring factor. Public entities are generally required to select the proposal with the highest score.

An RFI is a less formal process that public entities can use to select project partners. An RFI is generally used to promote an opportunity for various vendors to make themselves known to a public entity seeking services. An RFI describes the general opportunity, though not necessarily a specific and detailed work plan. Respondents describe their firms, relevant experience, and key staff. They also describe their approach to the work. RFIs generally do not include pricing. An RFI can be used to narrow the field of vendors under consideration.

There are also public-relations reasons to be mindful of how project partners are selected. In particular, the process used to select a broadband provider partner is critical to overcoming community and/or provider objections. Incumbent providers could use the absence of a transparent ISP partner selection process as a public-relations wedge to derail the public broadband project, no matter what the scope of public involvement.