Federal Vendor Recommender

There are about 44,000 federal employees whose job is to satisfy the government’s procurement needs by contracting with commercial and other organizations, but the market research tools available to them are fragmented, inefficient, and --  crucially -- they are not data-driven. With nearly $500 billion taxpayer dollars at stake every year, it’s time for federal procurement to catch up to the rest of the world by incorporating data science into their business practices.

Our group found a way to overcome the challenges of large, noisy, incomplete government procurement data with an end-to-end pipeline that enables federal employees to more effectively find the best vendors. Using collaborative filtering on the backend, we created a one-stop platform to empower government buyers with the ability to conduct smarter market research using actionable insights to inform data-driven business decisions.