NASPO | The Contracting Education Academy

June 19, 2017 By AMK

A new way of procuring radios? Roger that

It may sound quaint and old fashioned to some, but for state procurement officials, purchasing radios is a current and vexing problem.

State entities use radios and radio networks today for many reasons, including critical emergency services, expending millions of taxpayer dollars annually to procure radio technologies.

Even in the modern age of cell phones and social networks, you wouldn’t want a firefighter texting the stationhouse if you were involved in some type of emergency.

However, buying radios and the associated equipment is a challenge for procurement departments, who must balance the needs and wants of the users—police, fire and transportation, to name a few—and the complexity of the products against the ever-present need to keep costs as low as possible.

This is exactly the situation the state of Tennessee’s Central Procurement Office found itself in several years ago, when it had multiple, short-term contracts for various types of radios and maintenance agreements at fixed, and potentially non-competitive prices. Making matters worse, the contracts were limited and generally unable to keep pace with the dynamic radio market.

So, Tennessee officials created a new procurement process for radios that included several areas of innovation.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.routefifty.com/management/2017/05/radio-procurement-tennessee/138139/

January 30, 2017 By AMK

State procurement officers release priorities for 2017

Fundamental growth of centralized procurement leads the way.

The National Association of State Procurement Officers released a ranked list of their members’ top ten priorities for 2017. It’s perhaps not surprising, “the strategic role of central procurement” is ranked No. 1—including “creating an enterprise vision for the state” and “an elevated role in the hierarchy of the executive branch.”

The list paints a broad-brush picture of procurement officials focused on the growth and maturation of their agencies as a core statewide function, with workforce development, measuring performance, e-procurement / enterprise resource planning solutions, and effective sourcing strategies rounding out the top five.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.routefifty.com/2017/01/state-procurement-officers-priorities-2017/134962/

November 9, 2016 By AMK

What does public procurement in 2020 look like?

Urgent recruiting to replace retirees, expanded buying through cooperative contracts and greater reliance on technology are becoming the norm, and public purchasers will see these trends expand even further in the coming years.

new-generation-of-public-procurement-officials-11-2016 As the workforce ages, procurement professionals are scrambling to replace exiting employees. In fact, succession planning is one of the top five factors that will most affect procurement in the next few years. According to a 2015 Government Procurement survey of public purchasing officials, nearly one-fifth of the 498 respondents said they would be retired in the next two to three years.

This data was reconfirmed in a 2016 compensation and retention benchmark survey from the NIGP: The Institute for Public Procurement, which shows many public procurement directors and managers are planning to turn in their badges. In the high single digits (7.2 percent for directors and 6.6 percent for managers), survey respondents said they were considering retirement in the next 12 months.

Exiting staff will only compound the issues with the heavy workloads procurement professionals already face. About 35 percent of public procurement professionals surveyed in Onvia’s “2016 Survey of Procurement Professionals” are stretched or working extra hours to meet deadlines.

Keep reading this article at: http://m.americancityandcounty.com/technology/public-procurement-2020

June 2, 2016 By AMK

Why you need to brush up on your ‘spend analytics’

The National Association of State Procurement Officials (NASPO) recently issued a statement on the “Top 10 Focus Areas for State Procurement,” which caused us to think about the unique set of challenges the public sector faces when it comes to procurement.

The public sector is under a constant mandate to reduce costs, optimize contracts, and spend intelligently and transparently. So technology solutions that enable best practices in spend management must deliver rapid time-to-value.

The public sector also faces the obstacles of dealing with multiple agencies, districts and departments, an abundance of data from multiple sources and the need to choose suppliers carefully. While these challenges are not necessarily unique to the public sector, the private sector doesn’t also have to maintain a high level of transparency and reporting on what is being spent across state and local governments.

The NASPO statement reinforces this idea of data transparency. In fact, NASPO named “Spend Analytics and Greater Procurement Oversight and Efficiency” as its second priority for state governments in 2015.

Keep reading this article at: http://publicspendforum.net/brush-up-on-your-spend-analytics/

April 8, 2016 By AMK

Efforts to streamline state purchasing systems should be encouraged

What can states do to modernize the way they buy goods and services? Here are the recommendations and best practices from the National Association of State Procurement Officials.

Legislative and executive branches in states across the country are facing a new challenge: how to modify and streamline purchasing systems. In its simplest form, we are talking about how states buy goods and services.

Sounds simple enough, but too often across the country, billions of dollars are at stake when state purchasing is conducted through a stove-piped method of legacy systems, old technologies and obsolete procedures.

Procurement must be seen as an opportunity to reduce waste and increase efficiency in state government. To provide a framework for how to move forward, the National Association of State Procurement Officials has released guidelines and best practices. NASPO’s seven principles of state purchasing provide a consistent direction that states can follow to create efficient, modern and cost-effective purchasing processes:

Single Procurement Manager at an Executive Level
Delegation of Authority
Enterprise Approach to Acquisition
Comprehensive Procurement Law
eProcurement Systems
Skilled Procurement Professionals
Information Technology

Keep reading this article at: http://www.routefifty.com/2016/03/state-purchasing-systems-naspo-streamline/127134/

It may sound quaint and old fashioned to some, but for state procurement officials, purchasing radios is a current and vexing problem.

Fundamental growth of centralized procurement leads the way.

Urgent recruiting to replace retirees, expanded buying through cooperative contracts and greater reliance on technology are becoming the norm, and public purchasers will see these trends expand even further in the coming years.

The National Association of State Procurement Officials (NASPO) recently issued a statement on the “Top 10 Focus Areas for State Procurement,” which caused us to think about the unique set of challenges the public sector faces when it comes to procurement.

What can states do to modernize the way they buy goods and services? Here are the recommendations and best practices from the National Association of State Procurement Officials.

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