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Q&A
Passport Vault implementation and impact on contract processing
0:41:24
ยท
3 min
Council Member Julie Won inquires about the effect of Passport Vault on contract processing and user feedback. Director Lisa Flores explains the functionality and implementation of Passport Vault.
- Passport Vault allows vendors to share documents across their relationships with the city
- It's fully functional, but there's an ongoing change management process for users to fully utilize its features
- Training sessions are being conducted to help agencies and providers acclimate to the new system
- There's a small increase in cost associated with Passport Vault through a contract with Liferay
- The potential for AI integration in document management was briefly discussed
Julie Won
0:41:24
And what effect has Passport Vault or Document Vault had on processing contracts?
0:41:30
And what has been the feedback from the users?
Lisa Flores
0:41:33
Thank you for that question.
0:41:34
So Passport Vault, as you know, was one of the recommendations in Get Nonprofits Paid on Time, the joint report that was issued with both the controller and the mayor at the beginning of his administration, and both agencies and vendors when I walked in the door that was at the top of their wish list to recreate what was a beloved function and accelerator that did not exist in Passport.
0:41:56
So that essentially, what was not in Passport previously was what that was an accelerator is that if you were a provider and you were giving, let's say, x document across five different agencies or five different contracts, in Accelerator, you were able to choose who to share that with so they weren't constantly sharing the same document over and over again.
0:42:15
So essentially, the main function of Passport Vault was to recreate that ability for a vendor to share documents across their relationships with the city of New York.
0:42:24
I would say that so far, I think it's still a change management issue, in terms of both agencies and providers sort of reengineering how they manage their documents in order to fully take advantage of the functionality of Passport Vault.
0:42:42
But I think we're in the right direction of of folks getting acclimated, in how they're doing their work a little bit differently in order to have those documents all available and shared with all of their contracting agencies.
Julie Won
0:42:54
So to my understanding, it is fully functional, and some folks are using it and some folks haven't picked it up yet.
Lisa Flores
0:43:01
Yeah.
0:43:02
All of the agencies and vendors are using it.
0:43:03
I think, as I mentioned earlier, it's still not to completely bore you more than I already probably had with all of these details.
0:43:12
But just as an example, when you set up contract, it's basically if you were to set up on your computer all of your files, you need to do some work ahead of time of how you're organizing your files in order to then completely take advantage of how you're sharing those across the system.
0:43:28
And so agencies are still acclimating to doing that fully, but we have conducted I think the first training that we did for Passport Vault after release, we had 900 people on that call, right?
0:43:40
And we are weekly, daily, not only providing webinars and in person training because it's not just acclimating to the system functionality, it is acclimating to best practices and how you manage your files.
0:43:54
And we continue to offer those trainings to our providers and to our agencies.
Julie Won
0:43:58
Are there any costs related to Passport Vault for planned upgrades?
0:44:02
Because from what the feedback that we hear from our providers or from nonprofits is that if we were to utilize existing AI technology to build it into Passport to organize, filter, and tag these documents to have the AI actually skimming through and doing it for you, then it may save everybody a lot more time if they just bulk uploaded all their documents.
Lisa Flores
0:44:25
Chairwon, I would love to talk to you about all the things that AI can do in procurement.
0:44:30
As my staff knows, I have a very robust wish list if the world's a perfect place and there are rainbows and butterflies and using, AI appropriately and responsibly across the whole procurement system.
0:44:43
In terms of where we are now with the system functionality, as you may know, we have tried wherever possible in appropriate and responsible way to leverage additional software as part of our procurement end to end solution.
0:45:00
And so the Passport Vault, the documents are part of a contract we have with Liferay.
0:45:07
And there's a small increase to the Liferay contract, which I'm happy to share with you.
0:45:12
But it's very minimal to the overall cost of the system.