Help unleash the superpower of procurement in the United States: Join OCP!

In the United States, the federal government alone spends over $600 billion annually on public contracts. Given its scope and scale, government contracting has a vast, untapped potential to address many of the most significant challenges from improving the state safety net to increasing equal opportunities for local businesses.  

It is one of the biggest public procurement markets in the world, yet, as in many countries, procurement is an overlooked, underfunded, and understaffed government function. Most government agencies at the city, state, or federal levels are not able to make data-driven decisions to ensure that government contracts deliver on their economic, accountability, or environmental goals because they lack access to the right data. As a result, companies don’t have easy access to opportunities, residents don’t know how their government is spending taxpayer money, eroding trust in democracy, and exacerbating social inequity and climate change. 

It doesn’t have to be this way. We, in collaboration with other great organizations in the United States, believe in the power of procurement and have shown that change is possible. We’ve supported several city governments to increase spending with historically disadvantaged businesses, reduce negative environmental impacts, and improve data-driven decision-making. We’ve advocated with state and federal agencies to make procurement more digital and human-centered to achieve better policy results. We are working with technology providers to test better digital solutions. 

Finally, we’ve built partnerships with major non-profit organizations to scale our implementation, community building, and research efforts to promote radically better procurement. Our unique value as OCP is that we combine change management, digitalization, and capacity building within projects and reinforce this with advocacy, community building, and learning at the global level. 

We are now seeking an exceptional leader to help these efforts scale, to design and deliver a program spanning the United States, collaborating with current and new partners with complementary aims. Over the past few years, we have been focused on delivering projects that show what’s possible and inspire others, but we want to purposefully design programs that could work at scale. We also believe that there is a gap in working with technology providers to develop better solutions for government officials, companies, and residents. 

If you are interested in joining our exceptional team and transforming government spending in the United States, check out our job description and apply by May 3rd. Feel free to reach out to our Deputy Director Kathrin at kfrauscher@open-contracting.org to learn more about this opportunity.