Summary Update on Objective
III of the NYS Procurement Council’s Strategic Plan
Improve
the procurement system’s responsiveness with respect to service contracting, especially
technology contracting.
Report prepared for the NYS
Procurement Council meeting of
This
Procurement Council Work Group consists of the previous members of the New York
State Forum’s Committee to Streamline IT Procurement which was created in
December 2001 and designated as the Procurement Council’s IT Work Group at the
Council’s May 2001 Meeting. The
strategies for improving IT procurements included in the Procurement Council’s
Strategic Plan for this objective were developed by The Forum’s committee and
were derived from numerous suggestions made by the Forum’s Executive Committee
membership.
Gregory
M. Benson, Jr., NYS Forum, Work Group Co-Chair
William
Cunningham, CGI, Representing The Forum’s IT Corporate
Roundtable
Co-Chair, Work Group Co-Chair
Walter
Bikowitz, OGS
Dave
Gardam, OASIS, Representing state agencies and CIO Council Fiscal/Procurement
Committee
Jerry
Lipfeld, OSC
Ginny
Miller, DOB
Paula
Moskowitz, OGS
Joan
Sullivan, OSC
Deirdre
Taylor, DOB
Ruth
Walters, OSC
Susan
Zeronda, OFT
The
following represents a brief summary of progress made on each of the strategies
identified in the Procurement Council’s Strategic Plan under Objective III
since the last report to the Procurement Council in February 2003. Note that the Work Group has judged three
of the strategies (#1, #2 and #5) for streamlining the IT procurement process
as having been achieved.
Streamline
and consolidate IT non-service contract guidelines to build consistency across
the variety of existing contracts.
Lead
Work Group Member Reporting Progress:
Walter Bikowitz, OGS
BACKGROUND:
Beginning in early Spring 2002, OGS and OSC, under
the auspices of the Forum's IT Procurement Workgroup, began a study of the
various contract usage guidelines for OGS Technology Contracts, with a goal of
simplifying the guidelines and making them more consistent wherever possible.
Summary of Progress Reflecting Achievement of the
Strategy:
BACKGROUND:
As
an initial effort of The Forum’s Committee to Streamline IT Procurement, work
related to this strategy commenced in early 2002. The key objectives of this initiative are to:
The
IT Work Group has judged this strategy as being “achieved”
Summary
of Progress Reflecting Achievement of the Strategy:
Multiple
Award Service Agreements (MASA’s) Created
Where resources
are limited, where the time, cost, and effort expended in preparing and issuing
solicitations must be reduced, the MASA is a step in the right
direction. Agencies and other authorized users can establish a number of
agreements for up to a three-year period to "be on standby" and to be
called upon -when either Consulting or Live Training Services arise. Guidelines and a template have been developed
reflecting this improved process (see below for the OGS url).
On the Single/Sole Source
Where
a competitive procurement would not be practical and a single or sole source
award is justified, an agency may establish a single or sole source award under
an existing OGS Back-Drop Contract for those services instead of creating an
agency specific contract. The agency will be required to perform an analysis
including the need for not seeking competition, the reasonableness of cost, and
other factors affecting their procurement decision. OSC prior approval is
required (see below for the OGS url).
NEXT
STEPS:
The Multiple Award
Standby Agreements (MASA) template and guidelines are now available on the IT
Services contract web page,
www.ogs.state.ny.us/purchase/snt/awardnotes/73012S960275can.htm, & click on
"Guidelines, Forms, Templates for all Procurement options":
The ability to Single/Sole
Source is now available under the OGS Back-Drop contracts when
applicable. Refer to http://www.ogs.state.ny.us/purchase/snt/awardnotes/tcgoverview.asp,
click on "Important Facts" and locate the section entitled
"Single/Sole Source"
Develop
alternative models to the current “design/build” approach for large systems
acquisition
Lead
Work Group Members Reporting Progress: Susan
Zeronda, OFT and Joan Sullivan, OSC
BACKGROUND:
This
initiative also commenced in early 2002.
Efforts are designed to address the convergence of the “stovepipe”
approach to better reflect overall agency business management and service
delivery. This convergence has led to
situations where the acquisition of large IT systems design, implementation and
maintenance services has become more common.
The objective of this strategy is to develop a more comprehensive
approach to large system acquisition. An approach that entails the vision of
the entire process. At present, section
163A of the State Finance Law prohibits downstream involvement by design
contractors.
Summary
of Progress to Date:
At
a meeting on April 14, 2002 it was agreed that the paper drafted by OFT (that
walks an agency through a process for defining the existing technical
environment, the business processes, the new system functional performance
requirements and the new system technical requirements) will be amended to
reflect points recommended by OSC. That amended paper will be reviewed at the
May 2003 meeting of the IT Work Group.
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STEPS:
Work
Group members will review the paper and discuss the best means for
disseminating it to state agency representatives.
Create
a Directory of existing agency-specific IT contracts
Lead
Work Group Member Reporting Progress: Jerry
Lipfeld, OSC
BACKGROUND:
Work
Group members felt that sharing information related to IT contracts would
facilitate and speed the procurement process for everyone. Moreover, such a directory would provide a way
for agencies to pursue information about IT approaches and strategies being
deployed by others and could lead to collaborative working relationships and/or
cooperative procurement efforts. At
present, the viability of using a modified OSC database of contracts is being
explored.
Summary
of Progress to Date:
A
number of approaches to this problem and its beneficial outcomes have been
explored, not excluding the possibility of incorporating this effort with larger
efforts to organize contractual information.
CURRENT
STATUS:
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STEPS:
Explore
more creative ways to include additional IT items and services on state contract.
Work Group Member Reporting
Progress: Walt
Bikowitz, OGS
BACKGROUND:
More comprehensive IT items
and services on state contract would contribute to the efficiency; ease of
procurement and more easily achieve the benefits of aggregated purchasing.
The IT
Work Group has judged this strategy as being “achieved”
Summary of
Progress Reflecting Achievement of this Strategy:
This
strategy is closely linked to the Procurement Council Strategic Plan's
Objective #IV, "Further enable use of alternative procurement methods such
as consortia, strategic partnerships and piggybacking."
At the March 2003 Work Group meeting
Walt Bikowitz reported that the focus of this strategy has been on
collaborative contracting. The best
cases of such collaboration have involved NYS involvement with other states in
the creation of the RFP’s and evaluation of the resultant proposals. Involvement with the Western States Contract
Alliance and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts are representative of such
collaborative efforts and continuation of this work will be shaped by state
agency input. As a strategy being
pursued by the Work Group, Walt indicated that this too is at or near closure,
although OGS will continue to stay abreast of multi-state opportunities for
cooperatively pursuing IT procurement initiatives.
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STEPS:
OGS, working with other NYS
agencies will continue to explore collaborative contracting that aggregates
both in and out of state IT procurements when such aggregation proves to be
price and value advantageous.
Strategy
#6
Establish
comprehensive solution-type contract strategies and models with guidelines that
help agencies proceed through a procurement decision.
Work Group
Member Reporting Progress:
William Cunningham, CGI/IT Corporate Roundtable
BACKGROUND:
Business problems nearly
often require a solution that is now governed by multiple contracts and
procedures. IT procurements can be made
more efficient and brought into better alignment with business goals if full “solutions”
can be more easily procured. The
objective of this strategy is to develop guidelines for such a
solution-oriented IT procurement model.
Summary of
Progress to Date:
A committee headed by
William Cunningham of CGI has met several times to explore how a
solutions-oriented IT procurement model might be configured and what the key
considerations should be Community Renewal.
A paper reflecting the outcomes of those deliberations has been
produced. More recently, through the facilitation of the subcommittee, John
Kost made a presentation at the Procurement Council’s “roll-out” of its
Strategic Plan on January 30, 2002. All
Procurement Council members were provided with a copy of the overheads that Mr.
Kost used during his presentation. As a
follow-on to that presentation, the Work Group has explored a review of the
procurement statute with the Albany Law School’s Government Law Center as well
as a second presentation by John Kost to state policy makers as was suggested
by the Procurement Council membership at its February ’03 meeting.
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STEPS:
·
The Work Group is preparing a concept paper to
capture the purpose and outcomes of a review of the State Finance Law.
·
Once a concept is agreed to, a committee will develop
a scope of work and review it with representatives of the Government Law Center
to determine the necessary resources required to undertake the review.
·
The IT Work Group has also agreed to facilitate a
second presentation by John Kost to policy level state representatives as a way
to underscore the need for a review of the State Finance Law.
Additional
Strategy
Aligned with the NYS
Procurement Council’s Objective V-B, Strategy #2, the IT Work Group has been
pursuing the possibility of basic IT procurement education materials in
multi-media formats. Early work on this
strategy included a review of a sampling of the materials currently being used
by agencies for educating their staff.
At the February 11, 2003
meeting of the Work Group it was decided that along with the review of the
procurement statute, that this education initiative should also be a priority
activity of the Work Group since being knowledgeable about and competent
relative to the procurement process is fundamental to an efficient
process. It was felt that this is
particularly true in light of (1) the loss of many state agency staff with
extensive procurement experience and responsibilities and (2) the difficult
fiscal environment being faced by agencies that demands higher productivity and
timely effectiveness of IT procurements.
On April 15, 2003 a
planning meeting took place and the Procurement Council’s Education Work Group
Chair and as a result, the Education Work Group will meet with representatives
of the IT Work Group to plan the next steps for working in collaboration to
address both the specific IT and general procurement education needs of agency
staff.
Next
Steps:
·
Susan Zeronda, Chair of the Education Work Group,
will report the outcomes of the joint meeting to the IT Work Group at the May
2003 meeting.
·
Possible collaboration between The Forum and OFT will
be reviewed as a way to offer an education session as was done in October 2002.