Today we're shipping the largest update in the history of Clearbox Source and it changes what Source is. As of today, it takes you the whole way: search everything in one place, compare vendors on verified facts, check independently verified references and see exactly how to buy. Every piece of it is included in your subscription, at no additional cost.
Here's why we built it and what's new:
Three critical truths impacting our industry.
1. Technology is the fastest-growing line item in your budget. Unlike buildings or labor, big line items that grow slowly, software is a subscription that renews every year, often with automatic 5–15% increases. It compounds. That makes technology one of the fastest-growing categories in local government, and it means getting each technology decision right has a bigger financial and operational impact every year.
2. Most of those purchases never run a traditional RFP. More than 80% of government technology purchases don't follow a formal RFP path and are never publicly posted. They're fully compliant, they run on cooperative contracts and existing vehicles, and they run on research and references. So the decision likely happens before any RFP, and it ends at a question most tools leave you to answer alone: how do we actually buy this?
3. The open internet is a terrible place to do that research. When the research moves online, three problems show up fast. Your research isn't private, tracking pixels and lead forms sell your early interest to vendors within hours, and the sales calls start before you've even scoped the need. What you see is pay-to-play, visibility on the open web is a function of marketing budget, not fit, so the right solution for a government your size can be invisible on page one. And the proof that actually matters lives in contracts and implementations that search can't reach.
This release is our answer to all three: a safe, private, verified place to do the whole job.
1. Advanced Search: one front door to everything
The centerpiece of this update. Advanced Search lets you search any term across everything in Source at once: Market Landscapes, Companies, Products, and Agencies; and get back one unified set of results. There's no need to know the exact category or taxonomy: start typing, then filter by type, state, or department and route straight into the page you need. Many existing search points across the platform now lead here automatically. Instead of scattering your research across the open web, and broadcasting it to vendors as you go, you do it all in one private place.
And it's about to get deeper: Documents are coming soon. Contracts, agreements, case studies, and other primary-source records will be searchable right alongside everything else, so the evidence that settles a decision is one query away.
2. Company & Product pages: the full view of a vendor
Each Company Page brings together everything you need to evaluate a vendor in one place: the company overview, its product catalog and features, the market landscapes it appears in, its available cooperative contracts, and an interactive map showing where its products are actually deployed across government. Those deployments are live at launch and backed by more than 100,000 real-world implementations — so you can see which governments already trust a vendor before you begin an evaluation, and compare comparable products on independent facts instead of on a vendor's own marketing.
3. Agency pages: a government's technology ecosystem
Agency Pages answer the question the open internet can't: what are agencies like us actually running? Each one gives you a structured view of a single government's technology footprint — the vendors and tools in use across departments, recent purchases and contract activity from the past 12 months, and open opportunities. For procurement teams, that makes peer benchmarking straightforward: see what comparable agencies are buying and planning before you shape your own strategy — in a few clicks, instead of weeks of "what are you all using?" emails.
4. How to Buy: the fastest compliant path to purchase
This is the piece that closes the loop. Right on the Company Page, How to Buy shows the exact cooperative contracts and vehicles a vendor is available on OMNIA, Sourcewell, NASPO, and select state and federal contracts. Given that most purchases never run a full RFP, this is often the difference between a decision that stalls and one that closes: you can see, on the spot, the fastest compliant way to buy.
Grounded in real government data
What ties these updates together is the data underneath them. Vendor footprints, agency stacks, and product adoption all draw from real government purchasing records, including more than 100,000 real-world implementations live at launch, so what you see reflects how governments actually buy, not self-reported vendor claims. This is exactly what the open web can't give you: verified, comparable facts instead of whoever spent the most on marketing.
Put it together
Search everything. Compare anything. See exactly how to buy in one safe, private place built for government and grounded in real purchasing data, instead of the open web that tracks you, ranks by ad budget, and hides the proof. That's what Clearbox Source has become: the Government Only Vendor Intelligence Network — #GOVIN — verified vendor intelligence, for government, in one place, from the first question to the purchase order.
What's next
We're continuing to expand these pages, with case studies, searchable documents, and additional contract and pricing detail on the way. For now, Company and Agency Pages give you a connected, data-grounded view of the market, and Advanced Search makes all of it easy to find.
See it for your market
If you're a Clearbox Source customer, all of this is already live in your account, log in, run a search, and open the How to Buy section on a vendor you're evaluating.
If you're not yet on Source, there's never been a better time to start. Register and request a free trial and see Advanced Search, the new pages, and How to Buy for your own market, no PO, no credit card. Source is available on OMNIA and NASPO, so when you're ready, the path to purchase is the cooperative one you already use.
