mwarden says:

Dan, it’s great to see you digging in on this. Government waste and corruption (if there is any in this instance) is definitely something the right and left can agree is a problem and needs oversight from the media and the electorate.

I have been involved in responding to a number of RFIs and RFPs for state governments, so I wanted to provide a little context in case this helps in your effort to understand what is going on here. Typically there are four groups of companies who are involved in responding to a state government project. In larger projects, the state often issues an RFI first, which is essentially asking for opinions and options from the market players. The first group of companies involved are the companies invited to respond to the RFI by the state and who do decide to respond. Usually, the RFI includes a section saying whether non-invited companies may respond (usually the answer is yes). Those companies who were not invited but do respond are the second group. Then, generally the companies responding with useful responses to the RFI are then invited to respond to the subsequent RFP; this is the third group and overlaps with the first two. Those companies who were invited and respond are the third group. The RFP usually includes a section indicating whether non-invited companies may respond to the RFP (and usually the answer is yes). Those companies who were not invited but do respond are the forth group; they did not have to respond to the RFI in order to respond to the RFP.

I could not see the list you linked to in your previous post (it says I failed to log in) so I can’t tell which list is being published there; but I wanted to provide this background in case it helps you determine that. One thing to confirm is that it’s not just listing vendors that were invited to respond, rather than all vendors who responded.

Bruno Wolff says:

Maybe with all of the publicity this web site has been getting, they can recoup some of the cost by selling ads on the page.