Maintained by The Center
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When the government needs to buy resources from the private sector, the players, it uses government orders Government Orders (GO) to do so. You can think of these as tenders or procurementsprocurement. To ensure fair order assignment, and cheap fulfilmentfulfillment, the government uses a form of auction, when picking which company to assign the order to.
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The government needs resources across all industries and in high quantities and certain qualities. The examples are 700 trucks for the Fire Department. 20,000 laptops for the IRS offices. Some orders may combine multiple different resources: 120,000 apples and 200,000 oranges for the Foreign Relief Office, or 300,000 units of petrol and 500,000 units of diesel for National Reserves.
More examples of possible GO’s:
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Where to find Government Orders?
Government Orders are located on the Exchange. They have their own section on the left at the very bottom of the list (under bonds).
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The selection (bidding) process
New government orders are published periodically and there is a 5-day window in which companies can place their bids. The bid is for how much is the company able, or willing to, fulfill the order. The bids remain secret and can be changed or cancelled anytime before the bidding period ends. The company with the lowest bid wins, obviously, the government wants to save money. Only companies level 20+ (Corporation) can place bids. The company value is also taken into account when considering if you will be able to fulfill the order. You can still participate as a subcontractor if your level is too low.
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The company that is selected because it 's is the lowest bidder needs to put down a security deposit. The security deposit is known upfront and the company needs to have the cash available at the end of the bidding period. If, the bidder doesn't have the security deposit cash available, the company is disqualified and the next lowest bidder is considered. This is repeated until the government contract can be awarded. In case there are 2 bids of the same size, to break the tie, the time of submission is considered, the sooner the better. There need to be at least 3 eligible bids for the government order to be awarded.
The security deposit is kept by the government and released after the order is fulfilled, together with the fulfilment fulfillment reward, the original bid.
All bidders become public at the end of the selection process. But the The bid values will remain private.
The government reserves the right to cancel the government order if there aren't at least 2 bids or if there's a suspicion of the process being manipulated.
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Fulfillment period
The company the government order was awarded to has a certain time period to fulfil fulfill the order, this can be 3, 5 or 10 days. The order has to be fulfilled in full. If it fails to do so the government keeps the security deposit, additionally, the government agencies will not accept any bids form this company for the next 30 days.
The government order can be fulfilled anytime before the deadline in which case the security deposit and fulfilment fulfillment reward, the original bid, are awarded right away. The quality of goods delivered has to be the required quality or higher. Mixed quality goods are allowed - it's not necessary for the whole delivery to be the same quality.
Recap
Must be level 20+ to bid
Lowest bidder wins
Winner of bid needs to put down security deposit (at the end of bidding process)
Fulfillment can be 3, 5, or 10 days (depending on the GO)
Fulfillment has to be in full (failure and the government keeps deposit – restricted from bidding for 30 days)
Once fulfilled; security deposit is returned and the original bid is rewarded