Used Street Sweepers are Up For Sale at ECitydeals

A Los Angeles company today will open an online marketplace for municipal governments that want to conduct business online. Privately held ECitydeals.com hopes to turn a profit by giving government agencies an online site to auction surplus equipment, buy goods and services and advertise public works projects.

ECitydeals.com secured $1.7 million in private funding in 1999 and is now seeking more funding. Founded by municipal government consultant Larry Kosmont, ECitydeals.com lists 130 cities, including 99 in California, that have agreed to conduct some business through the year-old company.

ECitydeals.com is one of a growing number of companies that hope to profit from the massive task of moving government transactions online. Kosmont said the new company would collect fees from vendors who use the site to make sales to municipalities, and from cities that auction surplus equipment.

Kosmont, whose firm produces an annual survey of what it costs to do business in different cities, said the cumulative budgets of municipalities nationwide is $759 billion. “Our marketplace is the intersection of the public and private sector,” Kosmont said. “We’ll offer the best vendors, great security, and it will work with their own purchasing systems.”

Private businesses and government agencies nationwide are showing increased interest in helping government make the move online. The process is expected to streamline government purchasing and cut the time and cost of such tasks as renewing licenses and paying taxes.

“The analogy I’d make is the banking industry 10 years ago, when any dealings you had with your banker took place weekdays between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m.,” said David Drexler, a Los Angeles businessman who operates trade shows for companies that do business with government. “Banking is now pretty much invisible, given ATMs and mini-banks in grocery stores.”

But, just as there is heavy competition in the business-to-consumer and business-to-business online worlds, Drexler said similar battles will surface in the e-government sector. “Nobody has a clear idea of how we get to the end point,” Drexler said. “You’ve got a lot of start-ups out there now, but you’ve also got a lot of big companies with long-standing business relationships with government.”

The new competitors include Govworks.com, Ezgov.com and such high-powered companies as IBM, Bank of America and Oracle Corp.

ECitydeals.com’s beta site, which began operating late last year, recently conducted an auction for La Mirada. City officials said the auction cleared $24,200. “We’ve also sold motorcycles and vans,” Kosmont said. “We’ll be listing street sweepers this week, and we’ve also got a helicopter in. We’ll allow cities to monetize their surplus goods.”