Public Sector Research Compliance
Get the intelligence you need without putting your company at risk.
Navigating Public Sector Research Risk
Conducting research with government employees is a legal minefield. There are several nuances with research in the public sector market, including differences with individual state legislation for public records requests, win/loss interviews, churn interviews, and surveys. These legal pitfalls are often ignored by other firms and put your company at risk. CMI Edge understands these nuances and has built compliance into our research methodology. We know that getting it wrong presents real legal and reputational risk for your company or organization.
How We Work
Compliance Processes
01
Incentives & Honoraria
Government employees in public sector operate under strict ethics rules around gifts, incentives, and compensation. The standard honoraria and survey incentives that work in commercial research are often prohibited or restricted in the public sector. We navigate strict public sector gift rules to ensure participants are not compromised.
02
Recordings & Public Records Exposure
Recorded interviews and survey responses require careful handling. Communications created by government employees in the course of their official duties including participation in vendor research, can be subject to public records requests. That means a competitor could potentially file a FOIA request for a recording of your win/loss interview or the survey responses you collected. Government employees who understand this may be reluctant to speak candidly, and some agencies require internal approval before employees can participate in vendor research at all.
03
FOIA Request Anonymity
When you file a public records request, your identity as the requesting party can be visible to the agency and to anyone else who files a subsequent records request. This includes your competition. This is one of the most overlooked risks in public sector CI work. CMI Edge structures every FOIA engagement to protect client anonymity from the start, so the intelligence you gather never signals to competitors that you’re looking.
CMI Edge understands these dynamics because we have worked in this market for years. Every engagement is structured with public sector compliance built in from the start. From how we recruit and engage participants, to how we handle consent and recording protocols, to how we structure questions to protect both the participant and the client.
You get the intelligence you need without the legal exposure and putting your company at risk.
