Comments to NYC Commission on Government Efficiency: Speeding Up Public Procurement
Author’s note: In May 2026, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced the appointment of the Commission on Government Efficiency, or COGE, a Charter Revision Commission tasked with making City government work better. Led by Chair Patrick Gaspard (see video below), COGE will examine how the New York City Charter can be amended to improve the City’s government. These comments were submitted to the July 6, 2026 hearing dedicated to procurement issues, held on Staten Island.
To the Members of the Commission on Government Efficiency:
Thank you for this opportunity to submit comments on the reforms to the New York City Charter being considered by the Mayor’s Commission on Government Efficiency. I write regarding the topic of today’s hearing, speeding up New York City’s public procurement.
My Background: I serve as the Lynn David Research Professor in Government Procurement Law at George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C., one of the leading public procurement law programs in the world. I have taught at GW Law since 2002, including on state and municipal procurement law. My comments here reflect my own views and do not represent those of GW Law or any other institution.
I have extensive ties to New York City. I am a member of the New York State bar, and I served as a judicial clerk to Judge Lawrence W. Pierce of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan. My wife and I lived in New York for many years, as I practiced law there and she served as a dean of graduate schools of education in New York City.
Model Procurement Code (MPC): I work on a number of procurement law initiatives, both nationally and internationally. I previously served as an advisor to the U.S. delegation in a sweeping reform of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) Model Law on Public Procurement. I also serve as the Academic Advisor to an ongoing reform of the 2000 American Bar Association (ABA) Model Procurement Code(MPC), which is coordinated by the ABA Public Contract Law Section, the National Association of State Procurement Officials (NASPO) and Partners for Public Good.
Since it was first adopted in 1979, the ABA Model Procurement Code has guided public procurement laws across the United States. According to the Model Procurement Code Revision Project more than 20 states, from New Mexico to South Carolina, have enacted legislation based on the MPC. Many other major governments – including New York City – have relied on the Model Procurement Code as a guiding standard to promote best‑value procurement and the ethical stewardship of taxpayer dollars.
Commission’s Potential Procurement Reforms: As the Commission’s preliminary report pointed out, the last major reform of the City’s charter in 1989 drew directly on the ABA Model Procurement Code. The Model Procurement Code was subsequently overhauled in 2000, and as noted is now being reformed again. Those changes to the Model Procurement Code may help inform the Commission’s proposed amendments to the chapter in the City’s Charter which addresses procurement.
The Commission’s preliminary report suggested a number of potential reforms to the City’s $50 billion contracting system in response to public concerns. Those reforms often intersect with changes considered under the Model Procurement Code and around the world.
Reducing Paperwork: The Commission’s preliminary report suggested that, to reduce burdens on small businesses and other vendors, the Commission may consider streamlining vendors’ qualification questionnaires. Because vendors typically work in broader markets, the City could draw on other governments’ initiatives to share contractor qualification information (including anti-corruption information and past performance data). The City, following a model being developed in the European Union, could use other governments’ qualification information to reduce vendors’ burdens while at the same time reducing the City’s own performance and corruption risks. The Open Contracting Partnership, among others, is working closely with governments across the world (and the United States, including Portland and Boston) to make procurement data publicly available and machine-readable – cornerstones to efficiency, accountability and a healthy public procurement system.
Eliminating a requirement for public hearings: The Commission suggested eliminating required public hearings before certain contract awards (see Section 326 of the Charter). If, as discussed above, the City follows the global trend towards open contracting – making critical procurement information publicly available – the current comment period will be far more efficient than public hearings.
Delegating authority to contracting officials: The Commission’s preliminary report recommended that the Mayor be permitted to delegate procurement approvals to agency chief contracting officers. This would echo a nationwide trend to giving contracting officials more authority, to allow them to innovate and to be more responsive to the needs of government users and the public. The Model Procurement Code’s current reforms are, at their core, driven by the advancing professionalization of procurement officials, and New York City could improve procurement outcomes by embracing that trend. In practical terms that means (among other things) investing in the professional advancement of procurement officials, through training offered by NASPO, NIGP, the National Contract Management Association (NCMA) and other professional training providers.
Innovation and Procurement: The Commission’s preliminary report noted the need to reform procurement “to better match the challenge of acquiring effective technology, strengthening the City’s in-house roster of technologists, and breaking down IT barriers across City agencies and functions.” In the procurement community, this policy question breaks down into three inter-related components: (i) innovation in procurement (improved procurement processes to buy better technology); (ii) procurement of innovation (buying the best technology); and (iii) procurement for innovation (using public procurement to spur cutting-edge technologies in the broader economy). The Commission may want to consider reforms from each of these perspectives. Improving procurement processes to welcome new market entrants, for example, may make it easier for New York City to access new technologies and could boost high technology start-up firms in the City.
Streamlining Reports: The Commission’s preliminary report suggests that the Charter might be amended to reduce unnecessary reports by City procurement officials. First, the Commission suggests that the Charter’s requirement that the Procurement Policy Board “submit an annual report . . . setting forth the professional standards for agency contracting officers . . . including any applicable certification process” is outdated and could be replaced by more modern methods of training and certification. The Trump administration’s “Revolutionary FAR Overhaul” has done extensive work in this area. Federal reformers have developed “practitioner albums” that can be readily updated to meet procurement officials’ evolving needs for training and guidance; New York City may want to follow a similar approach.
Second, the Commission suggested that the plans and hearings required by the Charter for client services contracting could be streamlined. (This streamlining may be especially appropriate because the City’s procurement regulations separately require that, before a client services solicitation is issued, a “concept plan” be published.) Publishing plans for future procurement is a sound practice, but as the Guide to Enactment which accompanies Article 6 of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law’s model law explains:
The purpose of [non-mandatory publication] is to highlight the importance of proper procurement planning for procuring entities and suppliers and contractors alike. The article recommends the publication of information on future procurement, which may contribute to transparency throughout the procurement process and eliminate any advantageous position of suppliers or contractors that might otherwise gain access to procurement planning phases in a non-transparent way.
Thus it makes sense to call for advance notice of distant procurements only when doing so would enhance the integrity of the competitive process or would provide essential transparency to vendors, client communities and the broader public.
Conclusion: Thank you again for this opportunity to submit comments on these important reforms. Should you or your staff have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me through the background link noted above.
Author’s Note: The July 7, 2026 supplemental comments below followed up on the Commission hearing, and focused on strategies for reducing delays in procurement.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak with the Commission at yesterday’s Staten Island hearing on the reforms to the New York City Charter being considered by the Mayor’s Commission on Government Efficiency, regarding speeding up New York City’s roughly $50 billion public procurement system. These supplemental comments respond to a question raised at yesterday’s hearing by Commission Chairman Patrick Gaspard.
The majority of the testimony at yesterday’s hearing came from non-profit contractors that provide social services – such as housing for persons without homes – to the City of New York. Those contractors voiced one recurring complaint with the City’s procurement system: delays in contract awards and payments. When they presented, the City’s contracting officials also discussed extensive efforts that the City has made to shorten procurement time cycles. When my turn came to address the Commission, the Chairman put that same issue to me: what can New York City learn from other systems so as to reduce these procurement delays?
One very thorough study of procurement delays was done in 2024 by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) (GAO Report No. 24-106528) regarding delays in federal procurement. GAO focused on strategies used to reduce the time from solicitation to contract award, which is referred to as “procurement administrative lead time” (PALT).
In that study, GAO noted that the U.S. Office of Management and Budget had issued a policy memorandum in 2021 outlining a series of measures agencies can use to reduce PALT. While New York City has adopted many of those strategies (such as monitoring contracting delays across the enterprise), the Commission may wish to consider other innovative approaches, such as using vendor video presentations to streamline competitions. In a subsequent presentation on its report, GAO emphasized that these innovative strategies must be combined with agency-wide monitoring and accountability in order to reduce delays in the procurement process.
Thank you again for allowing me to submit supplemental comments on the Commission’s important work.
UNCITRAL — Reopening Model Public Procurement Law
The United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) secretariat in late January issued a “request for inputs” regarding possible updates to the UNCITRAL Model Law on Public Procurement (2011) and its related texts (including the Guide to Enactment).
The request from the UNCITRAL secretariat raised a number of issues that may be addressed in a reform of the 2011 law, including:
| Topic | UNCITRAL Model Law and Texts: Potential Areas of Reform |
| Green Procurement | The Commission has declined to take up issues of “green procurement” (environmentally sustainable procurement), but a key issue here is one of trade – the Commission’s core area of expertise. Some have suggested that the Commission assess the barriers to trade raised, for example, by ecolabels, and seek to facilitate the use of green procurement under existing law. |
| Suspension and Debarment | The Commission has indicated that it may wish to expand the Model Law and Guide to Enactment on exclusion and debarment – the process, an inherent part of contractor qualification, by which a public purchaser excludes contractors that pose unacceptable performance or reputational risks. |
| E-procurement | The Commission may consider lessons learned from the procurement of IT projects, the need for new evaluation criteria, enhanced governance, ownership and control of data used to build large language models (LLMs) and of the public sector data used in operating LLMs, and organizational and capacity challenges, to avoid reproducing errors such as inappropriate specifications, integration failures, and poor outcomes. |
| Contract Administration and Contract Termination Procedures | Ensuring sound contract administration – including fair termination procedures – is essential to robust competition. To that end, the invitation for inputs asked whether this topic should be addressed “by reference to the provisions and related guidance contained in” the UNCITRAL Model Legislative Provisions on Public-Private Partnerships. Those PPP provisions usefully identify terminations for convenience and default. But they are merely a starting point, for they fail to address the prior notice normally required for a termination for default, or the necessary boundaries to a government’s right to terminate for convenience. |
| Whitelisting & Certification Schemes | The secretariat asked for inputs regarding the use of “whitelisting” (listing preapproved qualified suppliers) or certification schemes. The Working Group engaged in the prior reform of the Model Law did not embrace “supplier lists” precisely because with framework agreements (“IDIQ” contracts in the United States) – a cornerstone of the 2011 law — there are more protections than when using supplier lists or “whitelisting.” |
| Non-Price Criteria to Advance Efficiency, Integrity and Strategic Procurement | The use of non-price criteria has revolutionized public procurement over the last century. By looking to “value-for-money” (or “best value”) and weighing both price and quality, procuring entities have been able to match emerging technologies with governments’ unique requirements and resources. The secretariat looked further and asked whether, and how, “non-price criteria may allow States to pursue their socio-economic policies (e.g., procuring from and supporting domestic micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs)),” and whether a “detailed list of non-price criteria is usually found in procurement legislation” or regulations. |
| Review (Bid Protest) Procedures and Dispute Resolution Methods in Public Procurement, Including Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) | The secretariat suggested an examination of the current law’s “review procedures and dispute resolution methods,” including the “use of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) in public procurement.” The Commission may wish: (1) To assess the current law’s Chapter VIII (Challenge Proceedings) against the Methodology for Assessment of Procurement Systems (MAPS), an OECD-supported assessment methodology which under Indicator 13 applies detailed criteria – many of which (such as limitations on fees) go beyond the Model Law — to assess remedies (bid challenge) systems. The MAPS approach, which fully matured only after the current Model Law was finalized in 2011, could help identify gaps in the current law. (2) To explore where Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) has been used successfully for bid challenges. |
| Facilitating Micro, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (MSME) Participation | Making public procurement systems more accessible, proportional and MSME-friendly requires a nuanced approach, as data indicate that (a) SMEs constitute 95-99% of all businesses in many countries, and (b) medium-sized companies are not disproportionately disfavored in public procurement. The Commission may therefore wish to consider tools targeted at micro and small enterprises specifically. |
These are many of the same issues proposed for review by the UNCITRAL secretariat (see A/CN.9/1230, paras. 17-26), which the Commission favorably considered in asking the secretariat to undertake preparatory work for a possible update of the model law (see A/80/17, para. 219).
Many of these potential areas of reform were also reviewed by Christopher R. Yukins and Caroline Nicholas in a book chapter, The UNCITRAL Model Law on Public Procurement: Potential Next Steps, in Elgar Companion to UNCITRAL (Rishi Gulati, Thomas John & Ben Koehler, eds.) (Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., 2023), available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=4293959. They followed up with additional inputs and references in a February 2026 letter to the UNCITRAL secretariat which addressed the proposed reforms outlined above. In the letter, Chris Yukins and Caroline Nicholas also noted the parallels between reform of the 2011 UNCITRAL model law and the ongoing reform of the American Bar Association (ABA) Model Procurement Code for State and Local Governments (2000), which is used by governments across the United States.
National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2026 – Summary of Acquisition Reforms
Photo: Martin Falbisoner
Paris — Teaching at U. Paris/Nanterre — OECD — Academic Network (Dec. 2025)
Teaching at the University of Paris – Nanterre
After the symposium on procurement-for-innovation in Paris on December 4, 2025, GW Law’s Professor Christopher Yukins again joined Professor Laurence Folliot-Lalliot’s class at the University of Paris-Nanterre on December 8-10 to offer an “Introduction to U.S. Procurement Law” (slides: Days 1-2 and Day 3).
Meeting at OECD on Procurement Updates
On December 11, 2025 professors from the academic network “Public Contracts in Legal Globalization” (including Professor Yukins) met with Paolo Magina and his procurement policy colleagues at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to discuss (among other things) potential updates to the OECD 2015 Procurement Recommendation.
Meeting of Public Contracts International Academic Network
On Friday, December 12 professors from the “Public Contracts in Legal Globalization” network met, coordinated by Professor Laurence Folliot-Lalliot (University of Paris/Nanterre) and kindly hosted by Professor Stephane de la Rosa (Professeur de droit à l’Université Paris-Est Créteil (UPEC) – Chaire Jean Monnet), at the Cité internationale universitaire de Paris to discuss “Public procurement at a crossroads – Geopolitical changes, normative shifts” (La commande publique à la croisée des chemins – Transformations géopolitiques, mutations normatives).
Professor Daniel Schoeni (U. Dayton/GW Law) and Prof. Yukins presented on “America First Trade Policy and Trump Tariff Updates” (slides), as part of a broader panel on international trade and procurement led by Professors Laurence Folliot-Lalliot and Stephane de la Rosa. A complete program for the day’s international workshop is available here.
Related Resources
Dutch Association for Procurement Law – 30th Anniversary Conference
GW Law’s Professor Christopher Yukins addressed the Dutch Association for Procurement Law (Nederlandse Vereniging voor Aanbestedingsrecht) in Ede, the Netherlands, on November 20, 2025 (slides) on procurement for innovation on both sides of the Atlantic (photo at right). The association was established in 1995 and celebrated its lustrum (30 years) at the conference. The association has 750 members who work as public officials, in law firms, in the academy, in the courts, in consultancies and across the private sector; the Dutch association is, in many ways, remarkably similar to the ABA’s Public Contract Law Section.
Professors Willem Janssen (University of Utrecht) and Sarah Schoenmaekers (Maastricht University & Hasselt University) (pictured at left) kindly hosted Chris Yukins. Professor Schoenmaekers will be joining GW Law’s December 3-5, 2025 symposia on procurement for innovation.
Photos credit: Willem Janssen
Zagreb Conference: Public Procurement – A New Way Forward
Professor Marko Turudić of the University of Zagreb, in conjunction with Maja Kuhar, president of DKOM (the Croatian remedies/bid protest agency), launched an enormously successful public procurement conference in Zagreb on November 10-11, 2025 (LinkedIn post) — a conference they hope to repeat in future years. GW Law’s Professor Christopher Yukins addressed the Trump administration tariffs in public procurement. Distinguished speakers discussed emerging issues in bid remedies, artificial intelligence, international trade and environmental sustainability.
Procurement-for-Innovation Across Europe — Symposium Series
Procurement, Anti-Corruption and Professionalism Training in Argentina
On October 16, 2025, GW Law’s Professor Christopher Yukins took part online in a program for Argentine judges coordinated by distinguished GW alumna Genoveva Ferrero of the General Secretariat of Administration and Budget of the Judiciary of the City of Buenos Aires, “Programa Intensivo de Perspectivas Comparadas en Derechos Humanos, Justicia Penal y Contratación Pública,” an intensive program on comparative approaches to human rights, criminal law and public procurement. Professor Yukins spoke on “Lucha contra la corrupción y transparencia en la contratación pública” — the fight against corruption in public procurement. Slides
Genoveva Ferrero also helped lead the 3-4 November 2025 Public Procurement Congress held at the Faculty of Law, University of Buenos Aires.
Victoria Christoff, professorial lecturer in law at GW, participated in the Congress, presenting on the current reforms of the U.S. federal procurement system. The panel, moderated by Barbara Fernandez Villa, the sub-secretary of the Cabinet of Ministers for the Republic of Argentina, also included Professor Andrea Sundstrand, professor of public procurement at the University of Stockholm, and a representative from the Office of Economics and Commerce from the European Union delegation in Buenos Aires. Ms. Christoff’s slides (in Spanish) are here.
The Buenos Aires Congress was very much a meeting of procurement professors from around the world. In the photo at left: Andrea Sundstrand (Stockholm University), Sope Williams (Stellenbosch University), Annamaria La Chimia (U. Nottingham), Gabriella Racca (U. Turin), Genoveva Ferrero (organizer), Patricia Valcárcel (U. Vigo), Tünde Tátrai (Corvinus U.) and Victoria Christoff (GW Law).
Appearing by video recording (to facilitate translation), Professor Yukins contributed an online lecture at the Congress in which he assessed the United Kingdom’s Public Sector Fraud Authority — a unique initiative internationally to use classic compliance measures to reduce the risks of fraud and corruption in the public sector.
The panel, moderated by Paola Laurenzano, Procurement Coordinator, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Argentina, also included Viviana Mora, Head of the User Management Division of the Public Procurement and Contracting Directorate, ChileCompra, GW Law alumnus Jean-Jacques Verdeaux, Procurement Manager, Latin America and Caribbean Region, The World Bank, and Javier Dávila Pérez, Chief of the Financial Management and Procurement Division, Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). Professor Yukins’ recorded presentation appears below.
Open Contracting in ASEAN Nations: Conference and Report
Shortly after GW Law’s worldwide webinar on open contracting, GW Law’s Professor Christopher Yukins joined a regional conference in Borneo, held in Kuching, the capital of the Malaysian state of Sarawak. That conference helped launch a report, prepared by Professor Yukins and GW Law students Anisley Sanchez and Ellen Rolda for the UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC), on legal issues in open contracting in the ASEAN member states.
ASEAN was established in 1967 with the signing of the ASEAN Declaration by Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Since then, Brunei Darussalam, Viet Nam, Lao PDR, Myanmar and Cambodia have joined, to make up what is today the ten member states of ASEAN. (Timor-Leste, the newest Member State, had not formally joined ASEAN at the time the study launched.)
At a September 2025 regional conference in Kuching, Malaysia which helped launch the study, experts from around the world discussed the prospects for open contracting as an anti-corruption tool in the ASEAN nations. The conference outcomes document called for a strengthening of legal and policy frameworks, aligned with core open contracting principles of disclosure, participation, and accountability.
The forthcoming UNODC report is the next step – an in-depth look at what is needed, from a legal and regulatory perspective, to bring open contracting to the ASEAN member states.
Open contracting is a simple concept: it means making public procurement data both accessible (typically by posting it online) and machine-readable (so that the data can be readily scanned and assessed). As the Open Contracting Partnership explains, open contracting “consists of disclosure and citizen engagement throughout the entire procurement process,” which “increases competition, improves public service delivery, creates better feedback loops, and ensures better value for money.”
The report will assess the prospects for open contracting in the ASEAN nations by looking to ten factors highlighted in a landmark report, How can we legislate for open contracting? (2021), published by the Open Contracting Partnership:
- Set out clear principles for all public procurement procedures in a single piece of overarching legislation.
- Establish strong anti-corruption and conflict of interest provisions.
- Promote competition and provide clear safeguards in non-competitive procedures, such as those used in emergency procurement.
- Ensure clear requirements to publish information at all stages of the procurement process, and maintain a complete record in one location.
- Use digital platforms and open data standards to foster and increase transparency and accessibility to information about public procurement procedures.
- Enforce publication requirements, deadlines, and clearly manage exemptions.
- Create procedures for public participation and monitoring across the entire procurement cycle.
- Support an accessible and effective complaints procedure.
- Empower oversight authorities.
- Provide effective guidance and guidelines to make procurement processes accessible and user-friendly to government, private sector, and civic users or observers of the system.