You want contracts that deliver results for everyone. You also know change is hard. Open Contracting Lift helps you with goal-driven reform & change management.

How will you change public contracting to radically improve goods, works, and services, or expand economic opportunity?

Open Contracting Lift is OCP’s program that helps teams of bold procurement reformers propel their ambitious plans towards systemic change. The program focuses on providing teams of reformers with change management and open contracting support. Lift is a competitive program that OCP expects to run every two years. Teams are selected based on their ambition and feasibility of their reform goals, as well as team capacity.

Lift works with teams that use contracting to better serve:

• Citizens: building safer roads, making buses run on time, stocking hospitals with the best medicines or hiring qualified school teachers.
• Businesses: boosting opportunities for women’s, minority-owned or local businesses, delivering the highest quality products and services or saving time and hassle.
• Government officials: encouraging innovation and better results, increasing competition and integrity, using data and insight for decision-making or working more efficiently.

Over 14 months, the selected Lift teams receive extensive, tailored support from leading experts and peers to deliver better goods, works or services for everyone through new contracting strategies. Learn how to build buy-in, open up data, and establish better ways to make public contracting effective and fair.

The call for applications is currently closed, but we can still help you with designing and implementing your open contracting reform. Here are some good resources, templates and examples that will help you on your journey to impact. We also encourage you to join our Lift Learning Circles to share and learn from your peers.

You can also always reach out to Kaye, our Lift manager, to get advice on using these materials and to learn more about the Lift program.

Lift is a competitive program, open to teams of reformers from governmental and non-governmental organizations from around the world. In our first generation of Lift, we received 77 applications from over 30 countries. Teams were selected based on their potential impact, capacity and feasibility of reform plans. Read more about our selection process from the first generation of Lift. If you want to get ready for the next round of Lift, please read here what makes a strong proposal.

The program has two phases.

Phase 1: Planning
3-5 months

In Phase I, we work closely with the five selected teams of reformers to develop their plans. The teams learn how to identify strategic entry points, engage stakeholders, apply contracting practices to become more effective, and build robust reform strategies for implementation and monitoring impact.

Phase 2: Implementation
Approximately 12 months

In Phase II of Lift, we support teams on two tracks:

• Results track: For teams that can achieve measurable results and impact within the 12 months. These teams will receive intense support from OCP and partners on open contracting and change management for the rest of the year to help them guide implementation and accelerate progress, including group workshops or seminars.
• Foundations track: For teams that need more time to refine their plans, invest in building blocks or test prototypes. We will work with these teams over a lengthier time period so long as their reforms are making progress. These teams will continue to receive OCP assistance, which will ramp up or down according to OCP’s engagement criteria.