The Project

Building a platform that makes it easier for small high-growth businesses to navigate the federal government and enables agencies to quickly source low-cost, high-impact information technology solutions.

What is RFP-EZ?

RFP-EZ is working to create a streamlined process for the federal government to do business with small high-growth companies. Right now, many of the best tech companies view the process for selling to the government as too long and too complicated. The result is suboptimal for both the government and the companies who potentially miss out on a large market opportunity. The RFP-EZ team is building a prototype process for federal agencies to source low-cost, high-impact solutions from innovative tech companies. The success of this effort will result in 1) better and less expensive products and services for the federal government, saving taxpayer dollars and improving results delivered, and 2) easier access to the government marketplace for high-growth start-ups, helping to fuel job growth throughout the country.

Setting up your development environment

1. Grab the code

git clone git://github.com/presidential-innovation-fellows/rfpez.git

2. Install dependencies

• Install Composer (http://getcomposer.org/)
• From the root project directory, run composer install
• Install node.js (http://nodejs.org/download/)
• In assets/build, run npm install

3. Configure your local database

• Create an empty MySQL database named "rfpez" (or whatever your heart desires)
• Copy the application/config/local_example directory to application/config/local (which will be .gitignore'd)
• Enter your database credentials in application/config/local/database.php
• From the root project directory, install the Laravel migrations table: php artisan migrate:install --env=local
  • If the last command only creates the laravel_migrations table itself, but does not migrate the tables, then also do: php artisan migrate --path=applciations/migrations --env=local
• Give yourself some seed data: php artisan seed --env=local

4. Run the Grunt watcher

We use the awesome Grunt to compile, concatenate, and minify our assets. We use Stylus instead of CSS, Coffeescript instead of Javascript, and Jade templates that compile to PHP.

Running the watcher is as easy as cd assets/build; grunt watch.

5. You're good to go!

For further reading you can check out the Laravel documentation. We'll be updating this readme soon with more info on how you can contribute to the development of RFP-EZ.