Sponsored content from ICMA strategic partner, NASPO.

Across the country, local governments are entering a new era where smarter tools and digital strategies are transforming how procurement processes operate. The National Association of State Procurement Officials (NASPO) ranked procurement modernization as their top priority for 2025, highlighting how governments at all levels are focused on making procurement faster and more strategic to better serve public goals.

However, many local governments, especially smaller cities and counties, face challenges: limited budgets, short-handed staff, and aging technological systems. All of these issues can make the idea of a technology overhaul seem overwhelming or out of reach. That’s why it's important to view modernizing procurement not as a single fix but as a series of small strategic steps that can be scaled over time. 

Local governments could see long-term success by starting small: digitizing one process, adding one tool, or shifting one workflow at a time. With the right strategies in place, city and county managers can:

• Make data-informed decisions.
• Track supplier performance in real-time.
• Improve transparency and public trust.
• Ensure better outcomes for their communities.

As digital transformation continues in the procurement community, the role of city and county managers is critical. Leading change doesn’t mean becoming a tech or procurement expert; it takes strategy and time. 

So, where can you start or continue improvements when you don’t have a big budget, a dedicated tech team, or months to plan? Below are practical strategies any city or county manager can use to begin building a modern procurement process for your office.
 

Utilize eProcurement to Enhance Transparency

Let’s start with the basics: moving the bid process online through eProcurement platforms that bring purchasing activities like solicitations, submissions, evaluations, and contract awards online. In NASPO’s 2025 Top 10 Priorities for State Procurement, leaders ranked eProcurement as their second most important priority, highlighting its growing importance in streamlining operations, widening access to opportunities, and enhancing public trust.

Benefits of eProcurement for Smaller Jurisdictions 

• Streamlined Access: Suppliers and staff can view contract information, supplier selection, and the available solutions and pricing are accessible, searchable, and trackable for reporting purposes.
• Clear Communication: Expands public access to information, helping both residents and suppliers understand what’s being purchased, from whom and for what purpose.
• Easier Reporting: Every action is logged, which can save time on administrative tasks and enhance reporting.

Imagine a council meeting where instead of hunting for documents and spreadsheets, you can pull up a dashboard and walk everyone through recent purchases with a few clicks. You don’t need a custom system to start. Many platforms are designed to scale your organization’s size. Cooperative contracts can also be a resource by offering pre-vetted tools and services that simplify the process of finding the right system or expert to help you get started.

When procurement data is accessible and transparent, it empowers internal teams to monitor spending, evaluate fairness, and ensure compliance with local and state policies. 

Turning Insights into Action

Data is essential in procurement. When used effectively, it doesn't just track spending; it expands insights into performance, value, risk, and opportunity. In an environment where every dollar counts, data equips procurement teams to make smarter decisions faster.

Agencies can now use data to identify gaps that highlight what’s working and anticipate risks before they escalate. For example, benchmarking against other agencies can help reveal gaps in performance, processes, and procedures that can help shape policies, guide planning, and improve results.

While cost savings remains a key metric, the real value of data is in how it brings context to performance metrics. Supplier performance, in particular, has a direct impact on an organization’s resilience, efficiency, and ability to innovate.

Instead of relying on scattered feedback, utilizing digital supplier scorecards can pull everything together into one clear, real-time view that can support more strategic decision-making across several key areas: 

• Performance Transparency: Aligns expectations and provides fact-based assessments
• Risk Management: Helps identify early warning signs, like recurring delays or quality issues
• Supplier Development: Identifies areas for improvement and enables collaborative action plans
• Sourcing Decisions: Informs supplier segmentation, contract renewal, and future sourcing strategies

These tools make it easy to monitor a supplier’s reliability and responsiveness and product quality, while also incorporating feedback from the end-users who use the goods or services. Turning informal feedback into structured, trackable data helps agencies make adjustments faster and build more productive supplier relationships. 

Beyond tracking current performance, data also plays a critical role in managing risk. With advanced analytics and AI tools, teams can now forecast potential disruptions, flag at-risk suppliers, or even identify patterns that signal risks before they escalate. At the same time, these insights improve visibility into spending trends, supplier diversity, and contract compliance, helping translate complex information into clear, actionable insights. Many cooperative solutions come with built-in training and support which can help make new technology feel less intimidating.

For local governments, this means fewer surprises and more time to adjust—whether that’s identifying alternative suppliers, shifting sourcing plans, or optimizing procurement for long-term impact.

Implementing Training

Tools and data alone aren't enough. Staff need to feel confident using them. That’s why training and support are essential, especially for smaller teams that may be balancing multiple responsibilities.

For example, a new contract management system is introduced. Instead of focusing only on how the platform works, the trainer showed how tracking contract milestones in the system could prevent missed renewals and last-minute scrambling. Staff may leave knowing not just how to use the tool, but why it mattered for keeping projects on schedule and budgets on track.

Training should go beyond how to operate a platform or generate a report. It should help staff understand the bigger picture: why procurement modernization matters, how the process connects to long-term goals, and what best practices look like from planning and sourcing to contract management and performance review.

Conclusion

City and county managers play a critical role in helping push modernization forward. By leveraging smarter tools, encouraging data-informed decisions, and investing in staff training, local leaders can improve outcomes not just for procurement teams, but for the communities they serve.