Every September, Brackwell’s city departments file their requests for new software, and every September, the same three companies end up on the shortlist.
Records obtained through a public information request show that since 2019, Brackwell has awarded 88 percent of its software contracts by value to three vendors: Aldern Systems, Corvid Data and a firm called Praxil. The city’s procurement office maintains that its bidding process is open to any qualified company. Few new companies have made it past the first round in years.
“We publish every request for proposal. Anyone can apply,” said procurement director Wendell Achebe. “The market for this kind of enterprise software is small. That’s not something our process created.”
Smaller vendors describe a different obstacle: technical requirements written, they say, with the incumbent’s product already in mind.
The requirements problem
Consultant Priya Nandakumar has helped four small firms prepare Brackwell bids over the past three years. None won. She points to language in recent requests for proposal specifying integration standards that, in practice, only the incumbent vendor’s existing system already meets.
“When a requirement says the new software has to be compatible with a system only one company built, you’ve written a request for that company,” she said. “It looks open. It isn’t.”
Achebe disputes the characterisation, saying integration requirements exist to avoid costly system conflicts and are written by department technical staff rather than procurement officers with any vendor relationship. He noted that Praxil, the newest of the three dominant vendors, won its first Brackwell contract only in 2021, evidence, he said, that new entrants can break through.
City council member Odalys Ferran, who chairs the budget oversight committee, has asked the procurement office to publish a breakdown of which requirements appear most often across recent bids, a request the office says it is compiling.
“I’m not accusing anyone of anything,” Ferran said. “I want to know if we’re accidentally writing the same three names into every contract before the bidding even opens.”
What the contracts fund
The three vendors’ work spans permitting software, payroll systems and, most recently, a records platform for the police department awarded to Corvid Data last spring at a value of 1.1 million, the largest single software contract the city has signed since the 2.1 million permit platform in 2024.
Average contract value across the period sits at 340,000, according to the budget office, though individual awards range from small licensing renewals under 20,000 to the Corvid Data records contract at the top end.
Achebe said the procurement office was reviewing its request-for-proposal templates ahead of the coming cycle and would consider Ferran’s request for a requirements breakdown as part of that review. Nandakumar is less optimistic that a template review alone will change the outcome.
“The requirements are only part of it,” she said. “The incumbents also know the reviewers, know the timeline, know what gets marked down. That’s not something you fix by changing a form.”
Brackwell’s next procurement cycle opens in October.
