Federal
Government and all states have a purchasing unit/division/department. Depending
upon the rules of the state or municipality what steps/approvals one must
receive in order to pay a bill.
For
the most part, government procurement offices handle the routine purchases of
government well. Even when
technology and prices change frequently, the procurement offices have found ways
to adapt. I.e. Most computer
companies now have web sites that list the current state government prices since
prices can change weekly. Initially
nobody used the government computer bids because by the time the bids were
completed the prices were out of date. Current
state accounting soft ware can link you right from a purchasing screen to a web
site that allows you to view the item and the price, then select the item if you
want to purchase it. All without
leaving a “purchasing system”. Up
to now I am probably not telling you anything you do not already know.
However,
government procurement offices are not established to evaluate the prices of
non-traditional items. Vermont,
like most if not all states have procurement rules.
I.e. if you want to buy something that is not available off the state
contract, there are rules for you follow. These
usually have dollar limits, time frames, and publicity notices.
The State of Vermont’s current RFP are available at: http://www.dca.state.vt.us/dcabid/bidbegingr.htm
However
in the Vocational Rehabilitation field, often time even normal state purchases
might have different relevant factors for persons with disabilities.
Take
computers for instance. When a
government purchase, you or someone within your unit knows what they want for
hard drive size, monitor size, speed, monitor, mouse, etc.
Depending upon the rules of your unit, you go and find the price get the
approvals you need and order probably of an Internet site.
The company then delivers the computer in a couple of weeks.
Either you or a technology person comes and sets it up for configures the
computer for your network.
For
a person with a disability, an item equally important to the price might be
close to home computer support. For
government, although the support might be factored into the cost, this may not
be a critical component. PC’s are
warranted for 2 to 3 years and in house provides the support.
However a person with a mobility problem, it may be more important to pay
a little more, but buy the PC from a local vendor down the street that can swing
by and pick up the machine if it has a failure.
This traditionally creates problems for government purchases.
No longer is the low price on a widely available commodity the primary
factor in the purchase. Another
example is who and how training will be provided.
Because
of the unique issues that the Vocational Rehabilitation program raises –
whenever a problem with the purchasing system has developed I have looked to
create a solution for both them and us. This
has resulted in “exception to the rules”.
In Vermont exception to the rules are called blanket delegation of
authorities. [Overhead #1] We have secured seven different b.d.a.’s that provide
different exceptions to the rules. These
are available for staff to review on the departments Intranet.
We have a little preamble that warns staff that these are privileges that
we have received and if we abuse these privileges, the purchasing division can
rescind them. One of the BDA 43 [Overhead 2] allows DAD to purchase hand
controls for vehicles. One of my
favorite is BDA 77 [overhead 3] that allows the purchase of used farm equipment.
This one came about after we tried to purchase a used manure spreader and
it was hung up for several months in the purchasing division.
You can imagine how hard it is to evaluate the value of a used manure
spreader. How do you collect bids
on this? How do you ensure
comparability? Etc. Several years
after we secured this I understand that one of my enterprising staff used this
to purchase some sheep.
Another
thing we have done is with much pushing had purchasing create a contract for
hearing aids. Although state government does not buy these for normal business,
we purchase enough that we wanted some standard way to compute pricing for the
ever changing array of hearing aid options.
Basically a wholesale plus markup contract.
One
of the items that we are working on resolving with the Purchasing Division is
the purchasing and modifications of vans. This
is an area where there are a limited number of skilled vendors in the region and
many factors come into play. E.g.
distance from the client, past experience with van modifications, work done by
in house staff or shipped, extent of the modifications.
Where we are headed with this one is creating a list of prequalified
bidders. This might vary dependant
upon the work requested. For
instance, the list for mechanical modifications to a body without many
electronics for hand controls may include one list.
We may have another list and for state of the art modifications and
electronics. This is because of the
difficulty bidding specific modifications that are unique to each driver each
time, the time it takes to bid, and our perceived usage of one vendor gives the
appearance of favoritism. We still
may end up with this vendor or one other, but will have established a process of
“fairness”.