Okay, I have a quiz for you. Let’s say you’re looking for some people to help run all your computers and their software.
Of course, this is purely hypothetical!
Let’s say you are in a lot of different lines of work, and use a lot of different types of software for different applications. You’d like to find someone who knows as many of your software as possible. It may not be possible to find someone who knows them all, of course, but you try to pick the best people available, the ones who know as many of your specialized programs as possible.
Three companies say they’d like to work with you. To find out what they know and what they’ve done, you ask them some questions. The same questions, so you can compare answers in the same way. That’s only fair.
Here are the answers you receive:
| Company | Company | Company | |
| A | B | C | |
| Do You Have Experience With… | |||
| Providing Services to any NJ Municipality? | X | X | |
| Maintaining the State of NJ MOD-IV programs? | X | ||
| Maintaining Edmunds MCSJ Fund Accounting apps? | X | X | |
| Maintaining Edmunds MCSJ Purchasing apps? | X | X | |
| Maintaining Edmunds MCSJ Budgetary Accounting apps? | X | X | |
| Maintaining FR Associates Dog Licensing System? | X | ||
| Maintaining First Byte Corp’s Tax Collection & Billing app? | X | ||
| Maintaining Micro Systems Property Assessment & Appraisal? | X | ||
| Maintaining AMCUS Legal System? | X | ||
| Maintaining ESRI-based Geographic Information system? | X | X | X |
| Maintaining RTA Fleet Management GAS interface? | X | ||
| Maintaining CCAR Service Order Tracking System? | X | X | |
| Implementation or maintaining ACCELA Permits Plus? | X | ||
| Maintaining Shelter Pro animal shelter software> | X | ||
| Maintaining TLC Library Management System? | X | X | |
| Implementing or maintaining USTI Asyst Financial System? | X | ||
| Maintaining Windows 2000? | X | X | X |
| Maintaining Windows NT? 4.0 | X | X | X |
| Maintaining Windows XP? | X | X | X |
| Maintaining Office XP Pro? | X | X | X |
| Maintaining Office 97 Pro? | X | X | X |
| Maintaining a large voice, data, video, audio network? | X | X | X |
| Maintaining internal & external Wireless LAN/WAN tech? | X | X | X |
| Configuring and maintaining PIX & WatchGuard Firewalls? | X | X | X |
| Configuring and maintaining VPN connections? | X | X | X |
| Maintaining Cisco VOIP? | X | X | X |
| Maintaining apps in MS Access and MS Excel? | X | X | |
| Maintaining a website? | X | X | X |
| Maintaining INFORMIX SE? | X | ||
| Maintaining INFORMIX-SQL? | X | X | |
| Maintaining INFORMIX-4GL? | X | ||
| TOTAL | 19 | 13 | 32 |
What Company would You Choose?
Alright, that was a trick question! You don’t have to choose a company to work for you.
What you do have to do is pick out the company that the City Council of Trenton awarded a contract to on Tuesday night to provide services to support all of the above systems that the City uses in its various Offices, Departments and Agencies.
And also pick out the company whose services the City declined to renew.
I’m not going to tell you the answers. But I will tell you that the winning company provided the “lowest” bid. That is, of course, before you count all the money that the City is likely to pay for the new IT company to learn our systems on the job. How much will that learning curve cost, both in terms of actual dollars, and the lost productivity of city workers while the new guys learn their business? Who knows?
But it stands to reason that it will cost something, doesn’t it? With fewer people working for the City because of cutbacks and layoffs, we will rely more and more on the IT systems in place to pick up more of the work load and help the remaining workforce become more productive.
But wait! You don’t want to rely on this questionnaire alone. Can’t you get another opinion?
Good question! In fact, state law requires that all responses to competitive bid requests be evaluated by appropriate parties, to review financial terms as well as fitness and ability to provide the services, the qualifications of the key individuals providing the services, and so on. That evaluation is supposed to result in something called a “Recommendation to Award Memo,” describing all of the reasons – monetary and other – that one vendor should be picked over the others.
Here is a link to an October 27, 2010 memo from city purchasing Agent Karen Marut to then-Director of City IT Services Jim Damron, requesting such a Recommendation memo. This October 27 memo, along with other items, was delivered to city resident Jim Carlucci after he filed an Open Public Records Act request for all items connected to the IT contract bidding process.
What was not provided to Mr. Carlucci was the Recommendation memo. Since Mr. Damron was laid off from his position as head of IT in early November, it is likely that he did not write such a memo. And since no one replaced Mr. Damron, it is very likely that no one wrote such a memo.By State Law, you need such an evaluation, and you need a report.
So, on what basis did Acting Business Administrator issue a two-line request on December 1 for a Resolution that would grant a contract to Lynx Technology Partners for $875,000? How did the Administration make that decision?
We don’t know. We don’t know why a company who responded that they were only familiar with 13 of our software platforms (OOPS! I gave away the answer) granted a contract over the current provider who was currently providing services for all 32 (DARN! Did it again!).
The reasons this vendor was selected have never been explained. City Council had no business granting the contract on Tuesday without the required reports and explanations.
So for Council members whose votes were swayed by “letter” from the State Department of Community Affairs, or who state “I conducted my own investigative research, and listened to community input,” that’s frankly not very persuasive. For others who may have been swayed by the celebrity value of reality TV stars, all I can say is I work with reality TV stars. They’re not all that!
These are no reasons to hire a company to manage critical systems.
In the next couple of months, what will happen when our new friends at Lynx get an urgent call from someone saying, “Help! We need to file a 3rd Quarter report with the State, and I can’t get the Actuals from the Edmunds Purchasing Package to sync with the Accounting Package, and I can’t compare that to the City Budget to Date in the Edmunds Budgeting Package. HELLLPPPP!!”
Will they answer, “I can’t help you with those, but I can do it in Excel”?
After questioning Mrs. Jackson, this is what she sent me!
“Joe Harris stated the same thing. Just to clarify, with the 19 or 20 different software packages currently in use by the city (and was presumably requirement to bid)?
In its presentation at the City Council Meeting on 1/6/11, Lynx stated “Lynx proposed to provide Level I, II & III support for all business applications.” They also outlined their process on Page 41 of their response to the RFP. Specifically:
Level I
* Receives and logs trouble ticket
* Resolves problem if possible
* Assigns to appropriate support group
* Pages on-call analyst if emergency situation
* Receives closure information from support groups
* Closes ticket, verifies with user
Level II
* Provides support, knowledge and tools for Level I and II; provide efficient end-user support
* Montiors service request or outage trends to identify and resolve potential problems
Level III
* Performs complex problem isolation and resolution
* Provides support for Level I and Level II for problem resolution and knowledge transfer
Lynx further explained that Levell III consultants are also responsible for managing trouble tickets between the City and software vendors. Prior to submitting their response to the RFP, Lynx contacted each software vendor to determine training options, associated costs and more importantly whether or not they have a software support agreement directly with the City. Specifically:
Software Support is Provided Directly to the City by the Following:
* Edmunds & Associates v2.5
* TLC Library
* First Byte Corporation
* AMICUS
* USTI Asyst Financial System
Minimum to Zero Training Required:
* Ron Turley & Associates – Options for 3-day onsite or six 2-hr online training sessions.
* ShelterPro – One 2-hour online training session
* CCAR Service order
* FR Associates Dog Licensing System
These Vendors Were Unreachable:
* Micro Systems Property Assessment (no website found)
* State of NJ MOD-IV Program (99% chance direct support contract exist)
In summary, “level of expertise” specific to five (5) applications are a non-factor since the City of Trenton has software support agreements directly with the software vendor. What is a a significant factor is the levels of incident management and the efficiency with which they are performed. Lynx will manage the trouble ticket processes with these vendors. Four (4) applications can be learned “in short order” as stated by the software vendor. I also received details on two applications, and I am confident they will have direct support contracts with the City.
It is important to note there are a total of 32 experience-based questions specific to technologies in use by the City. The RFP separated software/product modules from the software suite. For example, Edmunds & Associates v2.5 had three modules (i.e., Accounting, Purchasing & Budgeting) within their suite. With that said, only 11 experience-based questions were related to the above software packages (not 20).
Do you see how Joe Harris tried to manipulate the the situation with scare tactics?”
Seriously!?!?! How did she get elected?
My wife has expressly forbid me from saying in public what I really think about this vote. God help me if one of our intrepid reporters gets me drunk one night and replays the video of the IT Contract vote.
Hey, Dan – Buy you a drink???
Concerned – Thanks. I wonder how she came by this information about the other support agreements, the learning curve on other packages, and the like? It wasn’t from our Director of IT; he’d been laid off. It wasn’t from the Recommendation memo; there wasn’t one, as far as we know and as far as Mr. Carlucci’s OPRA request revealed.
I will assume it came from either Lynx or Lynx’s proposal, as did the other language she quotes.
So, it’s OK to use Lynx’s explanation, but ADPC “manipulated” the situation?
THAT’s why there should have been an evaluation report by our Purchasing and IT people done before this was sent to Contract: this result can’t be trusted.
It is a blatant copy/paste from Lynx’s proposal….and emails to her about that fact are now going unanswered….corrupt all over the place! What can be done to bring this to light? Who do we got to?
and the latest!!!
“Yes, I am sharing information I received with you. I am being open and transparent. What about the fact that Lynx lied about working for Plainfield? In its presentation at the City Council Meeting on 1/16/11, Lynx stated “Former municipal-specific customers include The City of Plainfield and Asbury Park Housing Authority”. Defined Network Services (shown on their history slide in the presentation) is the company that worked with City of Plainfield. Craig Smith was the Director of Purchasing at the time. The business relationship ended due to non-payment by City of Plainfield. Defined Network Services filed and won a law suit against the City of Plainfield. I have seen the court documents with my own eyes. I do not have a copy or email to share with you. Respectfully, we agree to disagree.”
How do you “agree to disagree” with facts?