Contracts and Procurement Guidelines

Follow the guidelines below and add the required documentation to your entity's website to qualify for a Contracts and Procurement Transparency Star.

Policymakers and the public have increasingly turned their attention to transparency as it pertains to contracts and procurement. Senate Bill 20, passed in the 84th Legislative session, for example, aims to increase accountability and transparency in state agency contracting processes. The guidelines below provide a platform for local governments to show their commitment to transparency in this area.

Contracts and Procurement Summary

Post a summary table or listing separately from audits and financial reports for the most recently completed fiscal year, as well as a narrative overview, with the following:

• Spending on procurement and contracting activities expressed as total and per capita, per student or per user amounts.
• Total number of publicly posted bidding and contracting opportunities opened (invitation for bids or requests for proposal).
• Total number of closed bids/solicitations or awarded contracts.
• Total dollar amount of bids received from invitations for bids or requests for proposals.
• Total dollar amount awarded from contracts.

Note that the Comptroller defines contracting and procurement activities per those subject to competitive bidding requirements described in Local Government Code Sections 252.021-.0436, 262.021-.030 and 271.021-.029, which apply to purchases exceeding $50,000, as well as Texas Government Code Sections 2669.101-.411 and Texas Education Code Section 44.031. You may wish to include additional pieces of data that provide context reflective of standards or conventions particular to your entity type. You may use the optional Contracts and Procurement Summary Form (PDF) to complete the Summary section.

Visualizations

Post data visualizations to your website showing the following:

• Time trend showing authorizations versus actual procurement expenditures for past five complete fiscal years.
• Total contracts broken down by business sector (e.g., construction, non-construction) or other meaningful categories or subcategories for the last completed fiscal year.

You may wish to include explanations or subsets of these trends in the visualizations, or post additional visualizations that provide context reflective of standards or conventions particular to your entity type. See the sidebar for templates you may use to create required visualizations. The visualizations must be posted on the page itself or a direct link and must be — like all the required information on the transparency page or section — easy to view and interpret.

Documents

Post the following documents separately from audits and annual financial reports and separately from any online or e-bidding interface. Documents must be labeled exactly as stated below:

• Bid documents.
• Intent to award documents.
• Awarded, competitively bid contracts.
• Vendor registration forms and/or guide.
• Procurement manual or written purchasing procedures document.
• Glossary of procurement terms.

Downloadable Data

Make the following data available for download in a spreadsheet or other machine-readable format separately from audits and annual financial reports and any online or e-bidding interface. Datasets must be labeled exactly as stated below:

• Vendors check register dataset (date, type of transaction, amount, purpose description, payee, etc.) for the past three complete fiscal years.
• Dataset on open contracting and bidding opportunities and closed solicitations for the past three complete fiscal years.

Other Information

Your transparency site should also include the following as applicable per entity:

• Links to contracting and procurement statutes such as Local Government Code Sections 252.021-.0436, 262.021-.030 and 271.021-.029, Texas Government Code Sections 2269.101-.411 and Texas Education Code Section 44.031.
• Links to applicable GASB statements or other reference resources as applicable (optional).
• Local contact information of procurement/purchasing officer (i.e., email and phone number) or their designee.