City Spurns Local Companies For IT Contract
Posted by Jeff Pruitt - 7/29/08 @ 11:36 am - Filed Under Featured, Local Politics
The city has decided to hire a company whose headquarters is based in France to handle its Information Technology services. Once again, it’s an out-of-town consultant hired to come in and do work that could clearly be done by local companies.
While the company has its headquarters in France, Ozzie Mitson said the company the city and county will deal with is based in Houston. The current consultant, Affiliated Computer Services, is also based in Texas.
In the private sector technology businesses have what they call their “core competencies”. These are areas of expertise that they wish to continue to develop and that are critical to future success. City government should see all technology-related contracts in the same light - they are the city’s core competencies and should be nourished, not outsourced.
Time and again city leaders, including the mayor, have talked about the need to create 21st century jobs. Yet when presented with an opportunity to do just that they back away and hire yet another out-of-town consultant. Yes many of the employees will stay local but the management should be here as well. The profit from such a venture would get reinvested into this community and not shipped off to France and/or Texas.
Fortunately at least one councilmember, Karen Goldner, is going to fight for local companies:
“I think this was an enormous lost opportunity for the city and the county to invest in both IT services, but also to invest in the local economy,” she said.
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25 Responses to “City Spurns Local Companies For IT Contract”
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Being a city employee and having to deal with Affiliated Computer Services, I understand the decision going to a IT vendor. Many of the people that work for ACS are good people and do great work, but they use ALOT of temps…..
Inconsistancy seems to be the normal mode of operation. You get person 1 that fixes problem A, then later you get person 2 that fixes problem B, but then causes problem C and problem A!!! Then when you try to explain it while person 2 is still there, you’re advised that person 1 is at fault and you will have to deal with him!!!!
COnfusing??!!! Try living it!!
I work for ACS and well… I hate it here. I hope that ATOS can bring leadership, standards, professionalism, and respect. These are qualities that are severely lacking down here in B16.
Person 1
C. it disappoints me to think that my tax dollars are being wasted with you surfing the internet when you should be serving us(see above for when “C.” posted). I believe that if you read the City’s policy for using the Internet(which can be found on the City web site) I think that it prohibits the use of City equipment to post on political boards such as this one. I also believe that if you read the current contract with ACS(which is public information) you would see that they are alloted “X” number of people and while yes they do use “temps” they have been used for projects outside the scope of the current contract. I am also pretty sure that they will have “temps” there until the end of the year since a number of the full time employees have found work elsewhere(since no one was guaranteed a job).
I think that it would be a pretty interesting article to see the internet usage of others working for the City and County (Hint…Hint…all of you journalist type people :))I am almost positive that this information can be gathered and is available through the Freedom of Information Act. If so much time is dedicated to surf the Internet and wasting tax payer money, I am sure that the Department Heads would be more than happy to “trim the budgets” by releasing workers since obviously there is not enough work to keep everyone busy.
It would sure beat the alternative of raising our taxes so that you can continue to “surf”.
“Once again, it’s an out-of-town consultant hired to come in and do work that could clearly be done by local companies.” –Local companies did submit responses to the RFP. From what I understand all companies were graded with the same score sheet, including the incumbent(who by the way is not local as was being reported by local media), who should have had a huge advantage, just by knowing the needs of the environment.
“In the private sector technology businesses have what they call their “core competencies”. These are areas of expertise that they wish to continue to develop and that are critical to future success. City government should see all technology-related contracts in the same light - they are the city’s core competencies and should be nourished, not outsourced.”
–When did technology become a core competencey of city or county government? I thought they were supposed to provide public safety, roads, sewers, garbage pick up etc… not nourish the next generation of computer nerds. The city/county should partner with technology experts so the city/county can USE cutting edge technology to provide services to the citizens, not develop or create technology.
“I think this was an enormous lost opportunity for the city and the county to invest in both IT services, but also to invest in the local economy,” she said.
—if a local company had what it took to do it, I think they would have made it through the process. That didn’t happen. I’m all for giving the local guy a shot, but I don’t believe in “outcome based” awarding of contracts. This isn’t pee wee baseball where everyone gets a trophy. There has to be a winner and loser. If a local company didn’t make it to the finals they didn’t make it. To my knowledge everyone received the same RFP.
That is simply an argument for a different vendor. The point is not that ACS should continue to be the vendor. The point is that this contract could have been viewed as more than “just” the IT contract. It could have been an opportunity for the city and the county to leverage our IT expenditure into economic development by supporting locally-owned businesses rather than just see it as a procurement.
Lots of good comments today!
First and foremost let me assure everyone involved that I will NEVER use any information gathered by this blog to out anonymous city, county or any other employees. In fact I commend them for reading sites like this dedicated to local government to get a feel for the public’s reaction towards their policies. In my opinion it’s good government.
Next my core competency comment wasn’t related to the city government but to the city itself. Information technology jobs are those that the city should be working to nourish and one way the city can do that is by using our tax dollars to invest locally.
I guess my point is, and I think this agrees with what Karen Goldner is saying, there are some policy decisions that need to be made on a basis other than just bottom line dollars and sense. A long-term vision and approach is sometimes required and that’s what I feel the administration is lacking here.
Can we get the cheapest price from some French firm? Sure, but we could also show that local government is serious about creating and maintaining quality jobs in this region by using the contract to build an enterprise partnership with local businesses.
We’re not buying toilet paper for the city bathrooms here - this is, so I keep hearing, part of the future for jobs we want to create in this region…
Jeff/Karen,
I sounds as if the issue you both have is with the qualification and selection criteria, not the specific selection that’s been made.
A policy that excludes competition, I do not believe is a good long term value for the taxpayers and the City. Further, once you start cooking the criteria, I don’t think it is a sustainable model that can be applied to the acquisition process across the board for all goods and services. I also believe there already exists a considerable self directed “buy-local” initiative that has been in place for some time for both the City and County (as well as consolidated City/County acquisition), but few people are aware of it. To their credit, the purchasing departments just get it done with out much fanfare. It might be prudent to first examine what’s in place before we begin making policy decisions based on a single instance.
Another thing to remember is that we have companies in Fort Wayne that compete and do business in regional markets, and if we defacto take away reciprocity through a strict “buy-local” isolationist-like policy, we may in fact disadvantage our local businesses currently doing business in the region. Long-term, these types of policies have traditionally had the opposite effect on economic development and have proven not to be sustainable.
Locally owned businesses did compete for this contract, and they apparently did not deliver the better value based on the selection criteria. The question should be, “What would they have to had offered to win?”, and “Why didn’t they offer it?” I would agree that if companies competing for contracts are subsidized by Government(s), that that represents an unfair advantage that should be addressed in any evaluation criteria.
Had the local company won, would we be even discussing changing policy to favor local vendors? Shouldn’t we be discussing how to make local companies more competitive to make the grade, instead of changing the grading scale? Helping a company be more competitive transcends markets and creates additional opportunities, where cooking the books to promote local economic development does not.
Dear “Shouldn’t you be working” it disappoints me to think that my tax dollars are being wasted on our current vendor. I would like to see an audit of how much time ACS management actually spends on site. We use swipe cards to enter our area, and well, My manager is NEVER here. Yet, he collects a paycheck every other week. At least “C” is at work. Yet another reason why ATOS will be a welcome change. - Person 1
Fred, you said: “I also believe there already exists a considerable self directed “buy-local” initiative that has been in place for some time for both the City and County (as well as consolidated City/County acquisition), but few people are aware of it.”
Yes, I am aware of this at the City level. I also believe that a purchasing process that is essentially opaque (”few people are aware of it”) is a bad process. Procurement that doesn’t follow rules that are wide open for everyone to see simply begs to be criticized for real or perceived favoritism. And NONE of these so-called policies were applied to the IT contract.
I don’t apologize for believing that local government should go out of its way to do business with local vendors. It is simply worth MORE to the taxpayers to have dollars spent locally. We give away large amounts of money to companies to get them to locate or expand here. Since we’re already going to spend a LOT of money on IT services, why wouldn’t we leverage that expenditure to support local businesses?
It’s ironic that we are having this conversation, Fred. I simply want the City to follow Governor Daniels’ Buy Indiana plan. My bad, I couldn’t get the 5 Republicans on Council to support their own Governor’s plan. That plan gives some preference - not a huge amount, but some - to Indiana-based vendors. That is a reasonable thing if your goal is to develop local businesses, and that is what I wish Fort Wayne would do.
Most criteria in government RFP’s come down to one thing - MONEY. This crap about the other criteria - hardly ever pans out as real.
I’d like to know if that )money) was the deciding factor on why a local, Fort Wayne company wasn’t chosen, or if it was something else.
My bet is on the money.
“Locally owned businesses did compete for this contract, and they apparently did not deliver the better value based on the selection criteria.”
Spell out the value. What was the “valued” criteria?
In response to C’s comment regarding the use of Temp employees.
Using temp employees is fairly common in IT. The fact is, most companies aren’t willing to pay for much more than maintenance staff (the FW/AC contract with ACS only covers maintenance not project and enhancement), with a few to work on smaller projects. For large projects, such as a complete network upgrade, or move from Novell NDS to Active Directory require lots of bodies. Both of the projects the City and County have done, with 70+ active projects at the beginning of this year, per their RFP. That’s more than a maintenance staff can handle and the cheapest way to get bodies is to use temps. Some companies have entire IT departments made up of temps, with managers being the only “regular” employees. Don’t be surprised if a new company starts using temps for various projects.
“Booo hooo hooo… I didn’t make the team, it’s someone else’s fault!!!!!”
Our local vendors didn’t get the contract because they aren’t good enough for it. Plain and simple. Now they know how high the bar is. Don’t lower the bar, create an environment to help local companies become good enough not just to reach the bar but to raise it. Or should Fort Wayne remain a hotbed for institutional mediocrity????
Kenny
The crap about other criteria IS real. Price was not even known until selection had paired down evaluation to under 4 vendors out of the initial 8. What the vendor brings to the City Counts and employees of ACS saying they “hate it here” is not exactly a good thing coming out of this U.S. owned, company that WOULD qualify as INDIANA BASED and local under any paradigm. I have had to invest in root canals too and I don’t exactly seek them out.
Kenny, I’m sorry you feel that way. One of the local teams that bid includes a partner that does IT management for the Air Force. Probably the Air Force doesn’t have any real IT needs, though.
Bill, ACS would NOT have qualified as Indiana-based under the ordinance I proposed. This is NOT about ACS or even ATOS. It is about the City and County seeing major contracts as an opportunity to do more than simply buy a service.
I should restate. It is not that I have it here. I love what I do, and the city and county employees are great to work with. It is the ACS management and their cattleprod approach that I hate. There are only two management level people that I hope are retained. One is in ops and the other works with the helpdesk. These two really care. The rest of them aren’t worth the office space they never use… - Person 1
I have one more thing to say. Since this is a public forum. ACS brought in a senior level exec to manage the transition. He told us that he is concerned about us employees and our future and wanted to help us find new jobs.
If one refuses, and say that you want to stay to see what the new vendor offers, they get crappy with you.
What that tells me is that they are purposely trying to stick it to the city and county.
How professional is that? I want everyone out there to know that the reason we lost the contract isn’t so much that we couldn’t perform the needs of the city and county. It is because the management for some reason or another didn’t want to go the extra mile. We were told specifically not to. I hope and pray that ATOS has a job for me.
It seems that if someone has a problem with ACS management, they should be looking toward the IT folks that draw a rather large paycheck from the city and county to oversee just such problems.
I suspect much of the discord comes from the contact( or lack, thereof)between ACS management and the IT directors.
Oh, and by the way.
Person 1, when was the last time you took your complaint to your City/county IT manager?
And, if you ever did, was there any response from the IT guy? There is not much worse that being told “I’m from the government. I’m here to help you”.
What, if any, is the policy on resolving your issues and, who writes that policy?
I think that my job is to serve. I might be a vendor, but I am paid with tax dollars. I don’t make excuses. If there is a problem, fix it. If there is a project do it. I have to put in my eight hours, why not be as productive as possible?
I don’t have a problem with the city or county. I have a problem with people in my environment just collecting a paycheck when I work hard.
Let’s face it, all of us County employees know our IT management is a joke. If ACS isn’t delivering on what we want, what makes us think we will get better performance when our management at the County hasn’t changed. As an example, our IT Coordinator whose initials are “ES” and his staff keep toy power rangers and dinosaurs on display in their office and have been seen playing with them. That being said, how can we expect anything to change when our own IT leadership acts like children. If we are cleaning house, we should start at the top.
Stop the presses! The informant has arrived!
ZZZZZzzzzzzzzzz……..
Someone forwarded this blog link based on the slam that has continued to occur to local IT Vendors. I admit I am a little amazed at the thought that there seems to be local business men/women that believe the IT community in Fort Wayne couldn’t compete on a larger market and that we are actually delusional enough to believe that a company from afar could be as cost effective as a local business. I defy any business in Dallas Texas to have a G&A rate lower than locally based company. And when I look around Fort Wayne’s IT businesses, I see vibrant, innovative and qualified companies. The IT companies within this region provide IT services to hospitals, large businesses, create solutions that meet the needs of Homeland Security (Trustbearers), created GIS mapping and provide kiosk based systems for travelers (Zoom), create specialized middle-ware coding for complex medical systems (Logikoz), support large scale office retailer online systems (Brittania), and so much more.
With that said, if you were to ask me what should be done going forward is consider the value of two comparably equal bidders are. A dollar spent by a tax agency within their community creates a $1.18 of economic value to the community. A dollar spent outside the community only equates to $.77 cents. That value comes from rent, utilities, services, and more that are acquired by those organizations that by choosing a non-local company we are losing out on. If they are equal, the nod should go to the local.
If the city/county is going forward with this decision, I encourage them to do the following:
1. Mandate the new vendor locate a permanent office with staff inside the region. Nothing says commitment like a local office.
2. Mandate the new vendor immediately connect up with IPFW, Ivy Tech, St Francis, Indiana Tech, ITT and the other regional colleges and enact a program that allows knowledge transfer and internship opportunities with the students we’re working so hard to keep.
3. Mandate the new vendor become a committed partner with Techpoint (the state technology association) and the NIIC to engage other local businesses to support their non-standard business needs and to help mentor/develop those organizations that supposedly were so substandard.
4. Manage the relationship closely and with an intimate finger on getting the value that they pushed so hard for. They selected a vendor that has committed to keep jobs local, now force them to uphold to that contract and get the value that they felt wasn’t available from the local businesses here that do that for our customers every day.
And for all those of you who doubt the value of your local businesses. When I moved to Fort Wayne, I heard about the challenges of finding goods and services locally and how many felt the need to go to Chicago or Indianapolis to “shop”. That may the be reason for the demographic switch over the past 10 years that has increased the number of Walmarts from 2 to 5. There are 14 Walmart’s within the Northeast Indiana region. If you believe the local businesses lack capabilities, quality and value, those businesses will not thrive and succeed. We’ll layoff the employees, cancel our utilities, stop paying our chamber dues and join the ranks of people trying to eek out a living on a Walmart salary. Our kids wont stay because the jobs available to them will only be the types of jobs that pay minimum wage and our colleges will close because an education isn’t needed to say “Paper or Plastic”.
I don’t want to sound negative but we wake up to the reality that we have so many amazing local businesses and that “big” business doesn’t necessary mean good business!
standing ovation
Local IT business owner. Those four criteria are highly doable. Noted. Thank you for some constructive comments.