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Council Member Lee advocates for user-friendly interfaces and standardized procedures
1:54:45
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172 sec
Council Member Linda Lee emphasizes the need for user-friendly interfaces in the city's contracting system and raises concerns about the lack of standardization across agencies. She also inquires about indirect rates and invoice processing times.
- Lee suggests a user-friendly tracking system similar to food delivery apps
- She highlights the inconsistency in contracting processes across different agencies
- Lee raises concerns about indirect rates for contractors and subcontractors
- She asks about the average time for processing aged invoices
Linda Lee
1:54:45
Oh no, I remember doing it by paper.
1:54:47
That's great.
1:54:48
It's definitely very different.
1:54:49
Vendex to where we are now is different.
1:54:52
Just sorry not to cut you off because I do have a limited amount of time and want to give pass it over to my other colleagues, but I imagine it to hopefully be like, you know, when I order Papa John's, know exactly where my order is in the process.
1:55:04
Right?
1:55:05
It's being made, it's being baked, and it's being delivered.
1:55:07
Right?
1:55:08
And so similarly, if we can do that with Passport and make it very clear, because I remember with HHS Accelerator, to upload our contracts and documents, there was like one little obscure button you had to press and it was like in a place that didn't make any sense and a lot of people would miss it.
1:55:21
So everything would be there, it just wouldn't be submitted and sent out to all the agencies.
1:55:25
So hopefully if there's something like that that can be done that would be great.
1:55:30
But sorry, so in terms of the rollout, I think I think we touched upon this earlier.
1:55:36
I think one of the biggest frustrations for me that was time consuming as an ED is that not every agency executes the contracting process the same way, right?
1:55:46
So even though there are certain standard policies and procedures, the ACCOs would request different things for different contracts within the same agency.
1:55:55
And so I don't know what efforts are being made there because that took up a lot of time on our end quite frankly, which you know when you have a system like Passport that is meant to cut through a lot of that time and effort.
1:56:08
So I just wanted to see what was being done there in terms of your work with making sure it goes down to every level of the staffing.
1:56:15
In terms of the sorry, I'm just gonna ask them one by one.
1:56:19
In terms of the indirect rates, I remember we didn't realize that some of the contracts we could qualify for indirect rates but when we asked the agencies told us yes you can ask for this but it is not part it will be taken out of your overall budget, right, which gives us a choice which we then have to choose as EDs.
1:56:36
Okay, you can take this indirect rate 10%, put it towards your contract and use it for overhead, however that will be taken from the overall pot not in addition to.
1:56:46
And the issue I have also is with subs.
1:56:49
A lot of the times the subcontractors don't get the same indirect rates.
1:56:55
I just want to get a status check of where we're at with the subs because that shouldn't come out from the main subcontractors pot, and also a lot of the subcontractors because they are working with so many linguistically specific communities, culturally specific communities, they do need that extra indirect rate, and so we just wanted to get that status update.
1:57:15
And then in terms of the aged invoices, I know someone had mentioned twenty eight days.
1:57:20
That is a big, big, big piece.
1:57:22
It's not just contracting on time, but it's also the invoices that need to be paid out on time and so what is the average time and what is the barrier that is taking so long for those to get paid out?
1:57:35
And I will stop there for now.