Q&A
Potential use of AI in contract oversight and management
0:26:26
·
170 sec
Council Member Brewer suggests the use of AI in contract oversight, prompting a discussion on its potential applications and challenges in city contracting.
- DSS has not specifically looked at AI for contract oversight but takes invoice review seriously
- MOCS is considering AI for various aspects of procurement, including writing and reading solicitations and invoice review
- Concerns about equity in contracting must be considered when implementing AI solutions
- AI implementation for contract management is still in early stages but is part of the procurement reform portfolio
Gale A. Brewer
0:26:26
Okay.
0:26:28
Back to my AI question.
0:26:29
And, I mean, why wouldn't that be helpful or maybe you're already doing it with some of the particularly, I would say the, oversight of what is presented from the nonprofits.
Molly Wasow Park
0:26:43
Interesting suggestion.
0:26:44
I have to say, I don't know that we've specifically looked at at AI, although I will let my my MOCs colleagues colleague chime in.
0:26:51
I will say, you you know, we take invoice review very seriously.
0:26:56
What is submitted can look very different from provider to provider.
0:26:59
Right?
0:27:00
It is we are looking for the same
Gale A. Brewer
0:27:02
From council member to council member.
0:27:03
Yes.
Molly Wasow Park
0:27:04
We are looking at at specific document for specific documentation, we don't always prescribe exactly the same format because we wanna give providers some level of of flexibility, to address the issue that you raised in your opening statement and that was in the DOI report about the $117,000,000 that was, didn't have a vendor attached to it.
0:27:26
Couple of things.
0:27:27
First, we actually did go in, pulled the backup on on a number of those different instances.
0:27:34
In every case that we looked at, the vend the backup with the appropriate vendor was attached to the case.
0:27:39
So what was missing was the name of the vendor in listed in the system.
0:27:44
That doesn't make it okay, but I do wanna but we did not find any instances associated with that that of inappropriate payments.
0:27:50
So we can still do better.
0:27:52
We are doing better.
0:27:53
1 of the, you know, the city has rolled out the passport system for invoice payments since the DOI investigation was done, through those system changes that was made with the and the staff training that went along with that, there's no longer an opportunity to make a payment if that, vendor isn't listed actually in the system.
0:28:13
But I do wanna to really emphasize that although it was a problem that we did not accurately list the vendor in the system, there was no associated we did not identify any instance of mispayment in those cases.
Gale A. Brewer
0:28:27
AI would've caught it, just FYI.
Charles Diamond
0:28:30
Chair, if I may Yeah.
Gale A. Brewer
0:28:32
I'm big on AI as you can see.
UNKNOWN
0:28:33
Go ahead.
Charles Diamond
0:28:34
Yes, indeed.
0:28:34
No.
UNKNOWN
0:28:34
I can
Gale A. Brewer
0:28:34
all the time.
0:28:35
I love it.
Charles Diamond
0:28:36
Yeah.
0:28:36
And I think exactly that.
0:28:37
We're also big on AI.
0:28:38
There are challenges.
0:28:39
And I think just as the commissioner just said, we're, in particular from Moxa's perspective, I think equity is a concern when we talk about AI.
0:28:46
We've done so much work to reverse the horrible, horrible statistics that we saw in this city for its contracting.
0:28:52
We're finally at, at a place where we're meeting the goals that we've had, but we have a lot more work to do, and we can't let AI take that backwards.
0:28:59
No.
0:28:59
But I'd say we're looking at AI in all aspects when it comes to writing solicitations, reading solicitations, invoice review.
0:29:05
It's in an early stage still, but as part of our procurement reform portfolio, that is absolutely something that is top of mind.
0:29:11
And we've had discussions with various commissioners about how they think it might help their contracting team.
0:29:16
So under action
