Scalable Voter Education Platform

The City of Detroit Office of Contracting and Procurement on behalf of the Elections Department is requesting proposals for design, development, and implementation of a personalized, scalable voter education platform, with proposals due July 13, 2026 at 3:00 p.m. EST and a pre-proposal conference on July 9 at 1:30 p.m. EST via Microsoft Teams. Detroit Equalization Credits ranging from one to five points are available for Detroit-headquartered, Detroit-based, Detroit resident, small-business, micro-business, joint-venture, and mentor-venture classifications; the City may elect to limit bidding to Detroit-based certified businesses when at least three eligible firms can respond, and the lowest equalized bid shall be awarded provided it does not exceed 12 percent above the lowest responsible bid or $100,000, whichever is less.

The platform must present civic information in clear, accessible, and personally relevant ways to underserved or disengaged residents. Core requirements include location-based personalization using ZIP codes and addresses to identify local, state, and federal jurisdictions; display of current officeholders and active candidates; user selection of civic issues of interest (housing, education, public safety); plain-language translation of complex information; standardized profiles for officials and candidates with traceable sourcing; and data integrity maintained through official government and legislative APIs or verified repositories. The platform must integrate with City data standards, providing machine-readable data access through direct database access, ODBC-compatible reporting databases, or APIs delivering data in JSON, CSV, or XML formats.

The contract term is a minimum of one year with potential renewal options subject to Detroit City Council approval, with a model contract term of five years from the date of City Council approval and the option to extend for additional years upon 90 days' written notice. The City anticipates one or multiple awards. Respondents must have a minimum of one year of experience. Evaluation criteria (100-point scale) are relevant experience (20 points), creativeness and innovative technology (20 points), strength of proposal (20 points), past performance (20 points), and pricing (20 points). The contractor must provide ISO 27001 certification or a SOC 2 Type 2 Report at contract execution with annual updates thereafter, and maintain general liability insurance of $2 million, non-owned automobile insurance of $1 million, and errors and omissions cyber liability insurance of $1 million per claim and $5 million in aggregate. Questions are due July 10 at 3:00 p.m. EST. All data and work products are the exclusive property of the City.