Companies must include information such as tax numbers, licenses and other professional accreditation. Typically, after a government buying shop approves a vendor's registration, it assigns the vendor a password to gain access to its databases. Some systems use password protection so that vendors can send proprietary information safely and with confidence that only authorized personnel will view bids. State and local procurement offices use the registration data to compile a database of approved vendors. Such systems let agencies' source selection team members get quick access to bids and make contract award decisions at their PCs.
Many states are somewhere between partial online buying and full-fledged electronic commerce.
But the state does not accept bids online. At the bureau, the extent of Web access that vendors enjoy depends on how much they pay to participate, McCain said. Registered vendors can download RFPs and other data from the Web site. These companies, too, can search the site and download procurement information and RFPs, but they do not receive automatic notification of upcoming buys. Each RFP has a bid number that the vendors can type into a search engine on the Web site.