From the State Government edition of September 13, 2026
Vendor disclosure study questions whether completed forms establish evaluation readiness
Blaine Kuehnert, Nari Johnson, Ravit Dotan and Hoda Heidari · Public-sector AI procurement · United States; local-government study with limited state transferability
- Publisher
- arXiv: Disclosure or Marketing?
- Original publication
- April 1, 2026 preprint
- Source retrieved
- 2026-09-14
What happened
Completed vendor FactSheets often lack the evidence needed for technical assessment.
Why it matters
State procurement teams can test this concern locally; city-centered findings do not establish state failure.
Evidence and measured results
Study combines 19 interviews and 39 FactSheets, using thematic analysis and expert rubric scoring resolved by consensus. It examines disclosure, not deployed accuracy or causal procurement outcomes.
Limitations and uncertainty
Coalition-centered sample and embedded researchers limit generalization. No controlled baseline; proposed governance improvements were not experimentally validated.
Put this evidence to work
Lighthouse Advisory interpretation, grounded in this source. Enriched 2026-09-14; this does not change the original publication date. Labels below come from the analysis itself.
Sales
Role takeaway
The buyer problem is assessing whether a proposed system fits a service when available descriptions leave important questions unanswered. Engage procurement, technical reviewers, privacy and the service owner. Ask what evidence would change the purchase decision and which claims cannot currently be tested. A bounded engagement could review one candidate's disclosures and build a prioritized evidence request. The value hypothesis is a clearer, more defensible decision process. Do not claim that a filled form proves safety, that every supplier is misleading, or that this study demonstrates savings. State use should be justified by the local procurement process.
Pre-sales engineering
Role takeaway
Fit is a review workflow linking each material claim to an artifact and a test. Prerequisites include access to a sandbox, version identifiers, test data rights and a named supplier contact. Inspect model and application boundaries, third-party dependencies and customer configuration separately. Use local representative inputs and adversarial cases to test unresolved claims; protect sensitive procurement material with role-based access.
- Proposed proof of value
- a second reviewer can reproduce the decision-relevant tests and identify remaining unknowns. No particular model, cloud platform or on-premises stack is validated by this documentation study. Agent action permissions require additional execution tests.
Delivery
Role takeaway
Give procurement an evidence register and assign a service owner to resolve open acceptance questions. Dependencies include technical review skills, supplier response time, legal review of confidential material and user participation. Train reviewers to distinguish missing information from demonstrated failure.
- Proposed acceptance criteria
- every critical claim is tested or explicitly restricted, unresolved items have owners and deadlines, and a material supplier change reopens the relevant review. These are proposed local controls. Plan for recurring review capacity and escalation if evidence is unavailable. Risks include converting the register into another completion checklist or excluding smaller suppliers without proportionate requests.
Implementation considerations
Lighthouse Advisory interpretation across the operating dimensions a public-sector buyer must settle before this evidence becomes a design. Each note answers the question under its heading for this specific source.
Architecture and integration
What must connect, and where does the AI sit in the workflow?
Turn unverified architecture statements into requests for system diagrams, version records and reproducible tests.
Governance
Who approves, reviews and stays accountable for outcomes?
Distinguish a completed intake form from a documented acceptance decision.
Security and privacy
What data, permissions and controls need testing?
Request evidence of tenant isolation, retention and incident handling through an appropriately protected review channel.
Accessibility and workforce
Who is affected, and what skills or accommodations follow?
Include accessible user testing and budget technical reviewer training; the study does not measure accessibility.
Procurement
What should contracts, pricing and exit terms secure?
Specify evidence delivery and retesting obligations before contract award.
Operating model
Which teams own the service once it runs?
Maintain an accountable decision owner across procurement, deployment and renewal.
What changed
No matching URL, arXiv identifier or title in all 274 archived resources. Historical evidence backfill adds empirical scrutiny of disclosure practice, distinct from archived contract-policy analysis.
Publication history
- 2026-09-13State Government · Issue 082 resources
Stable resource ID: govai-factsheet-vendor-disclosure-study-202604