Karen Goldner wrote an op-ed in the Urinal Gayzette today Monday regarding the City/County award of the IT contract. In it she had this to say.
We should contract with local and regional companies to provide the city’s and county’s IT services. Let’s take the considerable talent in our city and state and use it to benefit the government, the taxpayers and our economy all at the same time.
The fact is, there were no local companies “qualified” to bid on the work. None, zippo. In other words, there’s no collective pool of talent that can meet the requirements of the bid.
I’ve been told there was an effort to put together a consortium of companies in an attempt to get the work, and they apparently did not qualify. Rumor has it that this effort was led by Fourth Wave, Goldner’s employer. Is Goldner merely carrying the water for them?
That’s the harsh truth. Bids like this have a selection committee, and they are required to go through painful evaluations to come up with the most competent and qualified provider they can find. The review process has hundreds if not thousands of material reviews and ratings, not to mention oral presentations and conference calls from other similarly situated references.
Our local officials visited active sites of the finalists (see the Journal Gazette) and talked to the elected and unelected people to see how they were doing, what they were doing and how much they charged. They weren’t sitting around with a dart board thinking if the dart hits France, maybe they could get some extra wine and cheese.
ATOS has the depth, breadth, talent and capacity to hire and build in Fort Wayne. No local company came forward with the same qualifications.
ATOS is no more an Outpost than Honda is an Outpost.
Honda has begun the construction of a $550 million automobile plant on a 1,700-acre tract in Decatur County, Indiana, near Greensburg. Located 50 miles southeast of Indianapolis, the plant will begin mass production of fuel efficient 4-cylinder vehicles in fall 2008. The plant will have an annual production capacity of 200,000 vehicles and employment of 2,000 associates.
Oh well kiss my ass. Go back home Honda, you’re a foreign entity. If we cannot have an American company building an American car manufacturing plant, screw it, GO HOME! On the flip side, G.M. reported a second-quarter loss of $15.5 billion two weeks ago. That followed a loss of $8.7 billion by Ford. In spite of dropping sales, Honda reported a $58.6 million profit for the same period.
How about Toyota? Is Toyota an Outpost.
Toyota has made an investment in Indiana of $3.16 billion and employs over 4,400 workers. Guess what? Toyota reported net income for the second-quarter of $3.23 billion.
Maybe we should send all that nice money we got for toll road LEASE back if foreign money is a drain on our economy. All that Japanese investment that the Chamber was encouraging for the past couple of years should be stopped, because we don’t need no stinkin’ Outposts. Mitch’s trip to Taiwan – what’s that for? He’s depressing our economy!
It’s apparent to me that ATOS answered the questions, did their homework and showed up respectfully and more importantly – “qualified”. It’s obvious their pricing was fair and, frankly just as good if not better than what we’re spending with ACS for a bunch of temporary workers.
And just to counter a Sylvester/Goldner argument: there is no difference between opening the doors for Honda to come into Indiana and hiring ATOS – it all involves taxpayer funds. Honda got incentives (tax money), Honda got infrastructure (tax money), Karen Goldner gives out tax abatements (tax money). To distinguish private from public activity is disingenuous. They know that tax money flows to foreign companies as well as local companies as long as they create jobs and the foreign companies are the competition too, Ms. Goldner. That is the only criterion. ATOS is hiring local and creating jobs.
It’s called a global economy, stupid.
AWB
No related posts.
Entries (RSS)
Come on partner…
There is abslutely no reason to outsource a project like this in a City full of unemployed computer specialists. None.
This project should be brought in house and managed by the City using City employees.
It CANNOT be that hard to handle the IT needs of a City. In fact, I would assume that the IT needs of the City of Fort Wayne are less than or similar to the IT needs fo FWCS.
I agree with Karen Goldner on this issue 100%.
Mike Sylvester
This is not a foreign company coming in to invest their own private capital ala Honda. This is taxpayer money funding a government contract and there is absolutely no reason that our tax dollars can’t be used to support local businesses.
Nobody is saying ATOS can’t set up shop in Fort Wayne and compete for private dollars but the taxpayers of Fort Wayne have a vested interest in seeing their tax dollars reinvested into local companies whenever prudent.
Mike/Jeff,
I can’t believe what I am reading. The same guys who are against tax abatements for fast food restaurants are for subsidizing IT services for the City.
There is nothing that precluded a local company from bidding on this IT services contract. I believe a local consortium was formed to bid this opportunity, led by Karen Golner’s current employer, and they did not qualify to even bid. It’s my understanding that prior to determining to do a competitive procurement the City traded on doing it internally and the business model didn’t close.
Certainly you guys are not advocating slating the field to favor local companies, are you? First, I think the City should continue to abide by the established rules, regulations, ordinances, policies and procedures that govern procurement. Instead of emoting and reacting, it might be prudent to sit down with the City Purchasing Director and get the history and details on how this was handled and why, then I think people can make informed comments.
I believe the issue is not how this procurement was conducted or even the final selection, but the policy and associated regulations that govern it. If people want to review those and make concrete suggestions on how to change it, then I think we can have a discussion, but the apriori decision that selecting a local would somehow have been better, is just arm waving.
As far as investment is concerned, you’d have to check with the City Purchasing Director but I think there was an invest component by the bidder as part of the evaluation criteria. Since this was been awarded, it seems like all the details of the criteria and evaluations, comment sheets et al should be available as public record. A good scubbing of the process may be more productive to recommend other approaches. An informed outcome is certainly better than a directed outcome.
Abatements to Honda are NOT Honda’s capital—They are taxpayer money.
Squarefinger:
I am not in favor of subsidizing IT Services.
My first choice would be to bring the IT serives in house and do them through City employees and not contractors.
My second choice would be to contract it out and give local businesses a SMALL advantage in the bidding process. I think that the more of the jobs and profit we keep locally the better off we will be.
I most likely will sit down with the City Purchasing Director. What I am to know first and foremost is how they determined to contract it out rather then do it in house…
Mike Sylvevster