LANSING – The state buys a lot of things, and it is working to think differently about how it makes those purchases, Technology, Management and Budget Director David Behen told Gongwer News Service in a recent interview.
The department is revising its overall purchasing system to ensure it gets the best price on the goods and services the state uses, but it is also looking differently at what it purchases to ensure it has the right items, Behen said.
The shift in purchasing practices is illustrated not only in bringing in new leaders for the system, but in dedicating an entire room to mapping out the state’s purchasing strategy, Behen said.
“What we weren’t doing as 20 agencies, as a state government, was looking at economies of scale around the basic stuff we should be purchasing,” Behen said.
For instance, several departments use armored car service, but each had its own contract. “How many contracts should we have for that?” he said.
That service is one of the purchases that is part of a pilot to determine how to spread contracts across departments. Wireless phone service and fuel cards are also part of that pilot.
The state is also moving to category management for purchasing, grouping similar purchases to find ways to reduce their costs.
Development of that strategy includes meetings every other week among purchasing officials for all of the departments to lay out (physically, thus the need for a dedicated room) upcoming purchases and methods for managing those buys.
While the state is changing how it purchases, it is also working to change the attitudes of both state buyers and the various departments.
“When I first got here, IT and DTMB were kind of looked more upon as gatekeepers,” he said. “We’ve seen that change a little bit with our agency partners.”
That change has come, in part, through new agreements that better outline the role of each party, he said. “We’re doing more intense partnership agreements rather than service level agreements,” he said.
The department is also working to be sure the state is buying the right things, Behen said, particularly when it comes to technology.
“We’re going to really focus in the next 4 years on a mobile first strategy, cloud first strategy,” he said.
A growing portion of state employees are working outside their traditional offices, and he said they need the equipment to allow them to do that. So more state employees will be equipped with tablets or other mobile computing, and more of the state’s systems will be designed to work with those mobile devises, he said.
“We’re going to try to have mobility personas for folks,” Behen said. “If you’re a field worker for DHS, what do you need to be successful and is that any different from a field worker for DNR?”
That discussion also goes to office space, he said.
The state is already readjusting workspaces based on a new space plan that determines optimal space based on job types. Constitution Hall has been redesigned to the new plan and the Mason Building, when its renovations are complete in April, will also follow that plan.
Given the expected completion date, Behen said the department is just now deciding what programs would move into the Mason Building, which used to house the Department of Natural Resources. That department moved to Constitution Hall after the restructuring there, leaving the Mason vacant for a tear-out renovation.
Behen said decisions on uses for the new space should be made by the end of the month and, while he denied some earlier reports that any agencies had said they would not move into the space, he acknowledged there could be some stress involved in moving workers.
While the Department of Community Health is part of the overall space plan, Behen said it is not currently slated to move from the privately owned Capitol View Building. Should the Senate decide to move into that building, he said state officials would have to move quickly to find it new space. The Senate is planning to move into the Capitol View.
As the state re-evaluates its workspaces, some employees could also be left without permanent office space, he said.
“Do mobile workers need office space in our buildings or do they need a bullpen?” he said. “They just need a space to come in and meet with the team, and how often is that?”
The Department of State Police was one of the highest profile of recent changes in that direction, closing several posts in favor of providing troopers the technology they needed to do their work in their vehicles.
The continuing expansion of technology means the state also wages an ongoing battle against infiltration attempts, Behen said.
“We’re still blocking over 600,000 attacks daily,” he said. “We’re taking the threats of cyber security very seriously.”
Part of that effort is the state’s cyber range, which allows state and private security officials to observe viruses and other computer attacks and test ways to defend against them.
But defending state computers also means educating state employees about potential hazards, he said. In addition to the work developing training for employees, Behen said he is also pushing for training in schools on cyber security.
“It should be P-20,” he said.
If history is a guide, one thing that could end up dogging Behen over the next year is development of a new accounting system for the state.
The replacement for the Michigan Accounting Information Network is currently in development stages, he said. “The dashboard for that shows all green, but it’s early on in the project and that’s not always going to be that way,” he said.
That system went live for the 1994-95 fiscal year, but not without some concerns over costs and some bugs that delayed payments to some contractors.
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