News for the Statewide Procurement Community from the State Purchasing and Contracts Office
From the CPO
As most of you already know, the Contract Management Policy requires agencies/IHE to provide all contract managers with annual contract management training. The training must be completed by the end of each Fiscal Year, with the results reported to the SPCO by September 30th, beginning in 2023.
With overall compliance statewide at 93% (and 100% timely reporting from executive branch agencies!), I'm happy to share that the first year of required training and reporting was a success and we've shared some interesting highlights below. This was a huge and very important step in ensuring the State effectively manages its contracts, contractors, and fulfills its own contractual responsibilities, and we look forward to continued success in FY24!
Sincerely,
Sherri Maxwell, CPPB
Chief Procurement Officer
Contract Manager Training Highlights
The first year of required contract manager training and reporting is complete, and here are some highlights:
- Overall compliance statewide was 93%
- Total staff trained: 2,681
- The total number of contract managers per agency/IHE ranged from zero (Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind) to 281 (CDPHE)
- Five agencies had more than 200 contract managers to train: CDHS, CDOT, CDPHE, DNR, and OIT.
- 195 additional staff who were not required to take the training did, with the largest numbers from CEO, CDLE, CDPHE, DNR, DOL, and DOR.
New Courses from NASPO Procurement U
NASPO continues to build their library of FREE courses for public procurement professionals. New additions include:
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Elements of Effective Meetings (1 contact hour): Discover an insightful guide to conducting effective meetings from both the facilitator's and the participant's perspective. This course discusses key considerations for establishing roles and responsibilities, creating agendas, encouraging equal participation, building consensus, and managing conflict.
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Negotiation Strategies (3 contact hours): An in-depth exploration of negotiation strategies tailored to public procurement. This course explores the different roles involved in a negotiation team, important considerations during the planning process, and the elements of a principled approach to negotiation.
See below for more details on Procurement U including how to register for your own free account!
Accessible Procurement Toolkit for the State
The following was written by Karen Pellegrin, Senior Technology Accessibility Program (TAP) Manager, and first appeared in the State of Colorado Accessibility Newsletter.
Purchasing digital products and services that are accessible is critically important in ensuring that new technology has the least amount of issues as possible. This can save your organization a significant amount of time, money and resources by reducing efforts to fix or have issues fixed at a cost after purchase.
With this in mind, the TAP team has developed an Accessibility Procurement Toolkit that is designed to assist your organization in procuring accessible vendor products and development services. The toolkit provides a number of resources and guidance to help ensure you are procuring the most accessible products possible now and in the future.
Within the toolkit is a Standard Operating Procedure for Procuring Accessible IT which outlines steps to address accessibility compliance in your procurement efforts along with other tools and guidance for products you have already procured including:
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Strategies for Procuring Accessible IT presentation which gives additional guidance on accessibility procurement methods
- Guidance on Accessibility Risk Assessments and how to request them from OIT (for State Executive Branch agencies) or perform them yourself
- How to Use an Accessibility Compliance Report and identifying warning signs
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Understanding an Accessibility Compliance Report presentation which gives a breakdown on how to read and understand the information provided
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Vendor Letter Template to send to your existing vendors letting them know of their compliance requirements
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Common definitions related to accessibility and procurement
We hope these tools assist you in procuring the most accessible technology solutions for your organization and we are currently partnering with the State Purchasing and Contracts Office to collaborate and share these resources with our procurement professionals, vendors and customers on their State Purchasing and Contracts website and in other communications.
REMINDER: Accessibility & Procurement
As the State's accessibility standards continue to evolve, its important that we all stay up-to-date on the latest developments. OIT, who is responsible for these standards, has a webpage dedicated to Accessibility for Procurement. They also publish a monthly accessibility newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.
Accessibility requirements are also included in the SPCO's solicitation and contract templates.Click to edit this placeholder text.
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