Week eight: the LFW Platform moves to one codebase

Every Friday I write down what LFW actually did that week. Week one, week two, week three, week four, week five, week six, week seven.

This is week eight, and our email newsletter subscribers see it first.

Sign up if you haven't already, and stay tuned for more updates.

The LFW Platform, on one codebase

Most of this week went into the LFW Platform.

The screenshot above is its staff side. It opens like a desktop, with a Start menu, a taskbar and windows you can arrange side by side. We modeled it on Windows 11, so it feels familiar on the first day.

We also made a decision about how we build it: one codebase.

Until this week, the software we built out of bids shipped as separate products, each with its own name, code and screens.

Not anymore. On Thursday we finished folding all of it into the Platform, on the same records, files, payments and API. What used to be separate products are now apps on one Platform:

• Leagues: registration, teams, schedules, scores and standings
• Health referrals, newborn screening follow-up and the lab
• Incidents, from first report to close
• Bid postings, addenda, answers and awards

• Enlarge photo
• Enlarge photo

The reason is efficiency. A fix or a feature built once now reaches every app that uses that part, instead of being built five times over. One platform is how a small team keeps up.

By Friday morning, each app had its own screens in the staff desktop. New apps went in on the same parts this week too, including staff training and a contractor portal for work orders.

On Friday morning, 3,755 automated tests passed, with none failing.

It's built and tested, and it isn't open to customers yet. Once we've had a chance to dig into it, we'll talk about it more heavily.

Eighteen proposals out

Eighteen proposals and responses went out since last Friday's post:

• The legislature in the Pacific I mentioned last week
• A city in Oregon, for its website redesign and hosting
• A county in Kansas, answering a request for information on agenda management
• The same county, answering a second request for information, on detention software
• A public university in Germany, an expression of interest for a knowledge hub inside its WordPress site
• A national arts agency in France, for maintenance and hosting of its website
• A territorial government in Canada, for website content quality and accessibility
• A rural city council in Australia, answering a request for information on project management software
• A community college in New Mexico, for a new web content management system and managed hosting
• A school division in Saskatchewan, for its employee intranet
• A housing association in Wales, for a contractor portal
• A UN development office in Africa, for its website
• A state health department in Maryland, answering a request for information on infant screening
• Five federal agencies, answering sources-sought notices, market surveys and requests for information

A sources-sought notice is how a federal agency asks the market what it can do before it writes the request for proposals. The answers shape the solicitation.

Three nos

A tribal nation in Oklahoma did not select us for its website hosting and development contract.

A township in Ohio did not select us for interviews on its website redesign. It received more proposals than it expected.

A regional planning council in New York chose another vendor. It received more than 120 proposals.

That's two weeks in a row with a field of more than 100 for one website.

• Still waiting: a water district in California has every proposal in committee review.
• The recommendation for award from the school district in Texas is still not final.

Two buyers canceled: the housing authority in Florida from last week's list, and a council of governments in California.

Bids we did not send

Some bids cost more to qualify for than they're worth. Others ask for something we can't truthfully claim yet. This week we did not bid on:

• A school district's software contract in Maryland that required a SOC 2 Type II report, an audit that costs tens of thousands of dollars before the first bid
• A national library's website quote in Wales that required a paid cybersecurity certification costing more than a tenth of the contract
• Two national agencies in Latvia that required a minimum annual turnover we don't meet yet
• Two contracts in Brazil that required work or training on site
• The regional police service in Ontario from last week's list. Its bidding portal needed a paid subscription just to submit, on top of Canadian-only hosting and a records redaction workflow we have not built
• A government agency in Puerto Rico that required a sworn affidavit and local registrations
• Three tenders, in Belgium, Spain and Kazakhstan, that required a qualified electronic signature

On Friday we also read 32 new federal sources-sought notices and picked two to answer later this month.

Free registrations are a different story. We registered on more procurement portals this week, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Australia, the United Kingdom and California among them.

In talks

We're talking with a community association in Maryland about its website and the Platform, and with a professional services firm about its website.

Nothing is signed. I'll say more when there's something to say.

Small changes on LFW.com

A few changes went live on LFW.com this week:

• The About page lists our memberships, each with the month it started, in all five languages.
• Our UEI on the About page now links to LFW's public profile in the SBA's Small Business Search.
• The privacy policy adds SpaceX Super Intelligence, the company behind Grok, as an AI assistant subprocessor next to OpenAI and Anthropic. Updated November 3, 2026.
• The free audit form works on phones again. The field had collapsed to 21 pixels tall and cut off its own placeholder.

Next week

Next week, we're working on proposals for:

• A group of cities near Paris, France, for its websites
• A town in Spain, for its website
• A municipality in the Netherlands, for its energy advice website
• A UN agency in Switzerland, for its intranet
• Federal agencies, with seven more responses to sources-sought notices and requests for information

Next week is also the TML Conference in San Antonio, November 11 to 13.

I'm still deciding whether to go. It would be LFW's first real business trip outside the DC area.

Travel still needs approval from our chief financial officer.

If you'll be there, I'd like to meet.

If you know someone who runs the website for a public institution, I would be grateful for an introduction.