The City of Portland has launched an ambitious project to strengthen accountability, trim costs and boost local businesses by reforming the procurement data systems that administers a billion dollars’ worth of contracts every year.
The project is designed to make the City’s contract system more transparent and more accessible. That will save money and help local businesses -- which are more likely to be owned by women or minorities.
Leading the project is data analyst Gennie Nguyen, a trained cultural anthropologist who’s passionate about solving difficult challenges. We caught up with her last week as she was getting ready to launch the new contracting data portal.
How did you get into procurement? After I finished my PhD, I wanted a break from the academic world and applied to the City as an administrative assistant. It happened to be in procurement. Once I started to learn about procurement, I found it fascinating. That was six years ago. Things just snowballed from there. There is a lot of possibility to help emerging small and medium businesses grow by improving systems and procedures in procurement. Doing so may have a ripple effect in the broader community by creating local jobs, improving how Portland operates, and boosting a sense of pride by participating in City contracts.
Procurement seems like an obscure subject. What do you find fascinating about it?The City contracts nearly $1 billion every year. Procurement has so much impact on people’s day-to-day lives and in emergencies, and yet it is often undervalued and underappreciated. A lot of my academic career was focused on how publicly funded systems and services work for some and not others. But I never realized how much impact procurement could have on those public systems and services for our City.
Why is that? Our public procurement system has been really confusing. It is difficult to navigate, not just at the City but most public agencies. That makes it harder for new suppliers to break in, which holds back a lot of small businesses. Everyone agrees that we need changes in procurement and is very supportive, but procurement reform is challenging because it touches on so many areas of the City. This made procurement reform difficult to lead under our old commissioner form of government.
How did you tackle this problem? I think that I’m successful at leading procurement reform because I thread together the Big Picture and ideas about system improvement with action and details. Overall, my goal is not to solve one problem at time, but to create tools for others to replicate or simplify the solution. For example, we created the Business Outreach Toolkit to improve our outreach to small and medium businesses about upcoming opportunities. We could have chosen to support one procurement project at a time. We created a toolkit instead, so that other City employees who want to improve their outreach to businesses can do so without starting from scratch. The toolkit includes templates and resources designed to simplify and streamline outreach to potential businesses and share upcoming procurement opportunities. (City employees can access the Business Outreach Toolkit on our procurement website.)
Is your background in anthropology useful in your work for the City? Yes. I use my research skills to understand how things work. I use my teaching skills to share insights and guidance. Anthropology encourages taking everyone seriously, challenging assumptions, and seeing the interconnectedness between people and systems. Taking people seriously doesn’t mean naively believing at face value what people say but understanding the cultural logic and context that underpins it. I use a lot of human-centered design, user research, and empathy in my work and much of that comes from my experiences as an anthropologist. I've always been fascinated by how cities work. There's so much to learn, and it's one of the things I love about working at the City. Things are always changing. It's great for someone like me who is infinitely curious.
You’ve done academic research on urban displacement. Yes. There’s been a lot of displacement and resettlement in my own family. My parents were originally from North Vietnam. After the Geneva Accords, they were resettled in South Vietnam. They were children at the time. Because of the war, they moved to the United States and settled in New Orleans. Then they were displaced by Hurricane Katrina. I was born and raised in New Orleans. I wrote my master’s thesis on displacement in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and my PhD on displacement in Portland. My academic background is focused on resilience and how government could better serve people. This helps informs how I engage with community members, solicit feedback, and improve City procurement.
What are some things you like about Portland? Portland is near such a diversity of landscapes. We’re so close to the forest, close to the mountains, close to the desert. I love going to the Ridgefield Wildlife Refuge, Whitaker Ponds, Oxbow Park or Forest Park with my family, it’s mentally and emotionally healing. There are little parks and county libraries everywhere. I love our public transportation system; I use it almost every day. My son attends the Vietnamese Dual Language Immersion program in Portland Public Schools, and it reminds me a lot of the Vietnamese community that I grew up in. I love the amazing food here, going berry or cherry picking, and the coffee and wine selections. It’s noticeable when we travel that Portland has a lot going for it. And one of my hobbies that I only just picked up is birding. It’s a good excuse to get out and be more aware of the world around you.