Public records request
Also called: FOIA request, open records request, sunshine request, records request for bid documents
A public records request is a formal request under a state public records act (or the federal Freedom of Information Act) for government documents, which bidders use to obtain winning proposals, bid tabulations, contracts, evaluation scores and pricing after an award.
Federal requests follow the Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. 552, and each agency's FOIA regulations; FOIA exemption 4 protects a competitor's confidential commercial information, so a winning proposal arrives with redactions after the submitter is notified under Executive Order 12600. State requests follow each state's act, which usually covers bids, scores and contracts once the award is made, with trade secret exemptions that vary by state. Many agencies post bid tabs and contracts without a request.
What to check: when the records become public (often only after award or after the protest period), what to ask for by name (evaluation scoresheets, the awarded contract with pricing, the award memo), the fee schedule, and the response deadline in the act. A clear request citing the statute and the solicitation number gets a faster answer than a general one.
What it is not: a way to see competitors' proposals before award, or to get source selection information, which FAR 3.104 protects.
See also: Bid tabulation, Award notice, Debrief, Recompete
Questions that use this term
Search allYou get the full bid tabulations for county and school contracts by following each entity's specific public records request process.
There is no central repository for winning proposals at the state or local level, and you will need to file a public records request for each one....
This thread explains what can and cannot be posted about a live bid in an RFP thread. Our forum allows discussions about publicly available...