The marshaled, verified body of evidence behind the thesis — under-competed public solicitations cost governments money, firms mostly don’t bid because they never heard, and a large share is a reachable market, not a missing one. Every source links out to the original document.
Our market is categories where a real competitive supplier base already exists but the solicitation isn’t reaching it — janitorial, landscaping, IT services, construction trades, professional services, commodity goods. Firms exist; they just never heard.
It is NOT sole-source markets — jet engines, satellites, missile systems — where only one vendor can do the work. The supplier-concentration sources below are used only as contrast; the size-of-prize model nets true sole-source out.
The direct answer to "isn’t this just sole-source?" — No. These are ordinary, low-barrier trades with many firms, still under-competed because the notice doesn’t reach them.
Of 496 paving projects, 49% drew two or fewer bidders and 12% drew only one. Single-bid projects came in 5% above the cost estimate; competed ones 4% below — a ~9-point swing.
The flagship on-thesis source. A routine, low-barrier trade with many capable contractors, yet half its solicitations were under-competed, and the uncompeted ones cost measurably more — a real market that isn’t being reached, not one that doesn’t exist.
Scope: One state, one trade (paving), 2001. A state audit of competition (not an AASHTO/FHWA product).
A meta-analysis of 95 disparity studies finds capable "ready, willing and able" firms are under-utilized across every ordinary category — construction, goods, professional and non-professional services.
Cross-jurisdiction proof that capable-firm availability outstrips utilization across ordinary categories, not one niche.
Scope: 1997; disparity framing; broad industry buckets, not fine trades or bid counts.
Disparity indices (100 = parity): construction 41, professional services 31, non-professional services / goods 21 — with landscaping and janitorial named among the under-utilized commercial trades.
A recent statewide study putting disparity numbers on the exact reachable trades (landscaping, janitorial) that are our sweet spot.
Scope: Oregon statewide, 2023; disparity/availability framing, not raw bid counts. (Re-extract a specific per-trade index before printing it.)
Also in file as leads (confirm figures before printing): Vancouver WA 2024 (names janitorial/landscaping/roofing/staffing), Alaska DOT&PF 2021 (59.55% of capable firms "seldom or never solicited"), New Jersey 2024 (~240k contracts).
A stricter publicity requirement causally induced more bidders, and more bidders is the channel through which it lowered the price the government paid.
The cleanest causal evidence that wider advertising = lower cost — the exact mechanism of Supplier Discovery.
Scope: Italian public-works auctions; regression-discontinuity design. One country / one contract type.
In common-value settings, procurement costs can rise with more bidders (the winner’s curse). Florida highway construction data.
We cite this against ourselves — the honest boundary. Our real claim is moving a solicitation from 1–2 bidders to 4–5, not chasing an unlimited count.
Scope: Common-value environments; does not overturn the general result that more bidders lower price. Cite as nuance, not headline.
Also in file as leads (confirm figures first): Gupta 2002 (US, savings up to ~6–8 bidders), Iimi 2007 (~0.2%/bidder), Tas 2020 (cost-minimizing counts), Kenny & Crisman 2016 (publicity→competition).
Making tenders findable online raised the number of bidders by 1.6–2.2, cut single-bidder tenders by 7.8–13.5 percentage points, and raised the discounts firms offered by 7.4–8.0 points.
The cornerstone number — findability delivers BOTH more bidders AND lower price, from the exact intervention we run.
Scope: Bangladesh, 2011–16, fixed-effects on matched contracts. Developing-country e-GP — directional for US local, not literal.
"Finding opportunities on tendering platforms online" and suppliers who "do not know whom to contact" rank among the top barriers to SME participation.
Authoritative, cross-country confirmation that finding the opportunity — not price or capacity — is a leading barrier.
Scope: 37 OECD/partner countries; a policy diagnosis, not a causal estimate.
GAO names "knowledge of the federal contracting process" and "difficulty gaining access to contracting officials" as significant barriers. (A distinct GAO report from any we already cite.)
Scope: US federal, minority-owned focus; supports the awareness/information-cost family.
83% of measured government overspending is "passive waste" — failure to shop the market — not corruption.
The single most powerful frame in the file: governments overpay mostly because buyers don’t reach the better option — exactly the access problem we attack. Also disarms the "this is really about corruption" objection.
Scope: Standardized goods, Italian public bodies; top-journal quasi-experiment.
E-procurement brought in winners from outside the local region and higher-quality contractors (no measured price drop — an honest result).
Evidence that making opportunities findable pulls in bidders beyond the usual local pool — our "reach the firms two counties over" pitch.
Scope: Public works, two developing countries; benefit shows up as entry + quality, not price.
Charging $0.10/page to view legally public federal court records turns the system into a "gatekeeper to information."
A documented, on-record instance that paywalling legally-public government information is a recognized barrier — the direct analogy to bid-aggregator paywalls. Use as analogy (it’s advocacy, and about courts).
Scope: US federal court records; advocacy source.
Also in file: Duguay/Rauter/Samuels (JAR 2023, EU open data → more open competitive bidding — direction confirmed, magnitude to verify); OECD (2018) & World Bank (2020) leads (the effect is conditional on institutions — an honest nuance).
| Source | What it establishes | Status |
|---|---|---|
| GAO-22-104154 (2022) | DOD names "reliance on foreign and single-source suppliers" as a risk to mitigate (200,000+ supplier base). | ✓ confirmed |
| GAO-24-106129 (2023) | Consolidation "may reduce competition and increase the risk of higher costs"; ~400 defense M&A/yr vs ~40 reviewed. | ✓ confirmed |
| GAO-25-107283 (2025) | Dependence treated as a national-security risk requiring supply-chain visibility. | ✓ confirmed |
| SBA (2024) | Federal initiative to "reverse a decade-long decline in the contracting base." | ✓ confirmed |
| DoD "State of Competition" (2022) | Of ~51 A&D prime contractors in the 1990s, ~5 remain; remedy = broaden the base + small-biz outreach. | ▲ lead |
These are arithmetic on the sourced inputs — not measured outcomes. The "contestable" haircut (~⅔ of single-bid buys) removes genuine sole-source. We present the method and the range; we never quote one number. Even the conservative floor is billions.
| Input | Value / range | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| Total S&L expenditure | $3.7T (FY2021; $1.8T state + $1.9T local) — Census / Urban Institute | measured (hard) |
| Procurement share of that | ~20–33% → ~$0.9T–$1.5T addressable | assumption band |
| Under-competed AND contestable | ~40% single-bid, LESS genuine sole-source (~⅔ contestable) | assumption — nets out sole-source |
| Savings when de-monopolized | ~2–3% of spend / ~1% per bidder → ~13.5% on affected contracts → 8.3%+ optimistic | range, each end sourced |
The data gap is part of the pitch. There is no clean, primary, published distribution of bid counts for U.S. municipal/local solicitations. The best proxies (US federal single-bid ~44%, EU single-bid >40%) both land near ~40% — stated as borrowed from federal + EU analogues, not measured on US local data. That missing dataset is exactly what a tool like the Mindy map begins to produce.
Every source above is real and independently checked. ✓ Confirmed = the finding was read directly off the source or extracted from the primary PDF; ▲ Lead = the source is real and its figure is to be confirmed before printing in a government-facing document. New sources only — additive to the Institute white papers. Mindy is a product of GovCon Giants AI, an independent platform, not affiliated with or endorsed by any government agency. Figures are cited as published; none are modeled except the explicitly-labeled size-of-prize range.