Tavares, Lake County, FL: The picture at left shows a typical paperwork based purchasing process - and we ask: do we in Lake County need to repeat that convoluted process with duplicative and separate systems (and several may be manual, not computerized) in each Lake County government Agency? Why don't they all share a single, internet based purchasing system running in the "internet cloud"? Why don't they consolidate County wide purchases to achieve economies of scale like corporations do on a daily basis?
Local government purchasing departments have an annual fair for vendors to talk to representatives from the purchasing departments of many local Lake County agencies.
I have attended the last two. I registered as a vendor (consulting) at the first fair, but never heard anything for about a year, but now I get a notice about once every two months for a request for proposal that is not relevant.
The "leaders" of the purchasing fair created a "Pooled Purchasing" website called "Procurement Offices of LAKE" (POOL) within the Lake County website at http://pool.lakecountyfl.gov/ , and it is listed on the County's "Doing Business in Lake County" website. BUT, if you look at it, it hasn't been updated at all - it contains old events and not ONE purchasing "opportunity" for vendors to apply for. Good idea, but they either lost their champion or funding. So that went nowhere.
One of the holy grails is for all the purchasing departments to have a consolidated purchasing systems, but I learned at the Fair that:
1) NO elected leaders or Senior managers (County or City) in the County or Cities were concerned, helpful or supportive of this practice (maybe it was too technical for them?? ). The existing efforts were purely from purchasing professionals. Thus there was no political champion to push for collaboration and funding of a centralized purchasing program. There would need to be a visible official who pushed for conversion to such a system, but there isn't anyone doing it.
2) In order to consolidate purchasing programs, a central, shared purchase request and requisition system would be needed, but most of the cities and County used DIFFERENT methods to code their "commodities" and services, so many of them would have to change their whole system of purchase coding to a central system, and none of them seemed willing to give up their old system or fund the costs to switch. Also, some purchasing departments were using an external purchasing website that others did not respect.
3) There may be some resistance of local leaders or staff to give up the "power" of deciding who got contracts or purchase awards. Thus, they are putting self "power" ahead of reduced costs for the taxpayer. An example would be to use a single distributor of electrical parts at a lower price than each agency selecting favored (and not necessarily most efficient) vendors.
So, here is a challenge to all you elected officials. You can talk the talk about consolidating purchasing to achieve better prices at reduced "acquisition" costs, but you need to walk the walk by:
1) Providing active support to a phased consolidation of purchasing systems. Have meetings and workshops with purchasing managers to drive the process with the goal to shift 10% of purchases to a consolidated system every year. Make it the number one work objective of each Purchasing department and ensure they get IT and other needed support. We don't need or should have to fund separate purchasing departments for the County, School District, special districts and all cities in Lake County. I once worked for major companies with offices all over the US, and they ALL had combined, centralized services including Purchasing to achieve economies of scale. Lake County taxpayers deserve the same approach and efficiency. If you all use the same electric provider, think in similar terms of creating a consolidated purchasing service agency for the entire County.
2) Assign a barn burner cost reduction and cost consolidation Czar. Hire someone from the Manufacturing Industry to run the program since they REALLY understand the need for efficiency.
3) Budget for a centralized system of requisitioning and absorbing the costs of shifting to a central system of purchasing codes for commodities and services.
4) Give up local power of purchases to allow more efficient and reduced cost for government operations.
5) Find out why no one is using that POOL system and get it running or remove it from the websites.
vj
