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

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.

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.

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