Educational Efficiency
I work for a fairly large technology partner, and I deal with quite a few government and educational entities. I understand that they need to go through extra steps to ensure they are spending public funds in the best possible way and maintain accountability. Most of the time it is just an annoyance, but once in a while I run across a shining gem of bureaucracy that makes me shake my head more than usual.
If you’re a publicly funded school (K-12, community college, etc), this is generally what you need to do in order to purchase equipment for network infrastructure:
- Determine through some means that you need to buy/upgrade something
- Approach vendor/partner to put together a high level design and determine equipment needed
- Write an RFP with list of said equipment and post in a public place
- Wait for minimum number of bidders to respond
- Pick best price and order
Sounds pretty fair and logical, right? The whole process probably takes a minimum of 4-6 weeks, maybe longer for large or complex projects.
Now this is where it get’s stupid. In Texas there is something called the DIR contract. Every year, technology vendors from all fields apply for this contract, which involves pre-negotiated pricing and discounts on hardware and services. Once you get your contract number, you can sell approved equipment and services to nearly any state entity without the need for bidding. The customer knows they are getting the best price, and that the company they are buying from has already been vetting process. It takes months of paperwork to get this contract, but it is worth it for technology companies because it saves a LOT of time when dealing with state and local government and education.
So go back to the process in paragraph 2 and you’ll realize why I got so annoyed when I get an RFP on my desk with an exact list of part numbers required, and they just want a price per item then a total price. This list came out of a configuration tool, meaning that a partner or vendor already went through the trouble of building a configuration (with pricing included) and provided this list to the school. The school then copy/pasted this list into a Word document, stripped out the pricing, and sent it out for companies to bid on. You know what they’ll get? 5 responses, 3 of which will be from companies on the DIR contract, and 2 from random vendors that will be tossed out because they can’t come close on price. The 3 vendors will all have the same price, and the decision will come down to flipping a coin twice or pulling a name out of a hat.
