George Rebane
Let me say from the gitgo that I support Barry Pruett for Clerk-Recorder and have contributed to his campaign. On his blog my friend Aaron Klein (another person the Rebanes support) has written an eloquent endorsement of Barry with which I totally agree. Yesterday our Union published a lengthy front page article that covers almost all the factors related to the Clerk-Recorder office support software issue that is beginning to be the vortex around which this election is now revolving, or should I say, spinning. For the sequel, I assume that you have read the article.
What I found puzzling in the Union piece was its discussion of the procurement process for the support software in question, and the subsequent complaint (law suit) filed by AtPac that is now pending against Aptitude Solutions (Florida company and current software supplier), Nevada County, and Mr. Greg Diaz, our sitting Clerk-Recorder. I speak from over twenty years experience as supplier of services, software, and hardware to governments at all levels ranging from the federal down to individual school districts in counties across the land.
I was puzzled by the newspaper’s description of how our county procures software, and presumably other items from private sector vendors. The article characterized an uncharacteristic gulf that exists between a department/agency head and the county’s procurement office. Here in Nevada County, the process seems to be a ‘fire and forget’ affair wherein the department presumably gives the procurement office a set of system/product specifications, possibly a list of qualified vendors, participates in some kind of evaluation, and then retires to hear who the final supplier will be at what cost and schedule. In short, the end-user department appears to have minimal or no involvement in the actual scoring of the vendors (an admittedly subjective procedure), or the remainder of the procurement process. Such a process normally involves quite a number of intervening steps and communications with the competing suppliers before a winner is selected and the actual contract negotiated. Is that really the way our county operates?
In this case the entire burden of procuring the Clerk-Recorder support software system was seemingly laid on Mr. Steve Monaghan, the county’s Chief Information Officer and head of several other county departments. Mr. Diaz was represented as having essentially retired from the process until the contract with Aptitude Solutions was ready for signature. From the article I assume that some words passed between Monaghan and Diaz during the course of the selection, but certainly nothing that was necessary to determine the winner.
In my experience this is not the way an efficient, let alone an effective procurement process works. The enduser department head is the alpha and omega of the entire process, and drives it in all aspects of material detail. It is that manager who will have to live with the procured product/service, and his/her ability to do the job will depend on the choice, the accountability for which cannot be outsourced to another arms-length department. ‘They bought it for me and it doesn’t work. It’s not my fault that I can’t do my job.’ That manager will be in almost constant contact with his/her potential suppliers asking and answering critical questions before and after the bids are submitted.
So what does a procurement department do? Well, they perform an important set of functions that may be grouped under the ultimate rubric of ‘bid/contract management’. In government procurement there exist an almost endless series of hoops the vendor must jump through before he can finally deliver and collect a check. The ‘hoops’ are secondary to the enduser but critical to make sure that the legal, financial, logistical, and political requirements are all met. The procurement department has the expertise to insert, monitor, and enforce these contract provisions for the jurisdiction (Nevada County) in which they serve.
Having said that, the procurement department in no way would be allowed to independently pick the winner of any supplier beyond paper and pencils. The procurement department would always involve the enduser department head, and in many ways would act as that manager’s agent during procurement.
So it was hard for me to accept that Mr. Diaz stood back from the process until Mr. Monaghan told him who was to be the new software vendor. The more likely and believable explanation, especially in light of the complex cost and software usability factors involved, is that Mr. Diaz picked the winner. Had I been in his place, I would have insisted on it since my job performance and career would be impacted by the selection.
Now we come to the elements of the aforementioned federal law suit. AtPac alleges that Mr. Diaz breached confidentiality and, possibly, committed fraud in his post-award communications with Aptitude Solutions when it became clear that Aptitude Solutions itself needed additional information and support before it could fulfill its newly signed contract with the county. The suit alleges that Mr. Diaz was over-generous in the information he transmitted to Aptitude Solutions, which was astute enough to require the county to sign an indemnification letter holding them harmless. Aptitude Solutions did this presumably because it didn’t want to be liable for violating someone else’s intellectual property rights which may have encumbered the software/access information it would receive from Nevada County’s Clerk-Recorder office. I have always required such indemnification when my customer supplied me with information they did not develop or have clear title to.
Finally, no matter how the suit comes out, the county will now be spending staff-hours and money to defend itself. As a county taxpayer, this does not make me happy, especially during times of tight budgets. Moreover, I hold Mr. Diaz accountable for having put the county in such a position of potential liability. At best, this suit will divert many people from the Clerk-Recorder’s appointed round besides demonstrating poor leadership and judgment in vendor management. And at worst, it would reveal a serious character flaw in that department’s manager, and further impose a to-be-determined financial liability on the county.
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