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Q&A
Transparency in contract management through Contract Stat and Passport Public
1:05:54
·
3 min
Council Member Julie Won raises questions about the transparency of Contract Stat and the user-friendliness of Passport. City officials discuss current transparency measures and upcoming improvements to contract management systems.
- Officials emphasize the importance of transparency while avoiding public shaming of agencies or providers
- Passport Public provides transparency on solicitation opportunities and current solicitation statuses
- MOCS plans to roll out new vendor reports in the fall, offering a more user-friendly dashboard for vendors to track their contracts and invoices
Julie Won
1:05:54
So, for contract stat that you are announcing again, can you help me understand is contract stat going to be publicly viewable as well for the nonprofit providers?
1:06:04
Because one of the biggest problems on Passport that people struggle with is that it is not user friendly and it is impossible to know where a contract is being held up and what they're supposed to do.
Michael Sedillo
1:06:14
Thank you so much for the question Chairwon.
1:06:16
I would say you know we firmly believe in transparency and I'd invite Director Yu to add more about Passport Public, which is a pretty significant thing this administration has done to put a significant amount of data online and publicly available for the public.
1:06:31
One thing I would say is, as I mentioned in my testimony, I really think of our two key stakeholders here, our nonprofit providers and our public servants.
1:06:43
I'm a former first grade teacher.
1:06:44
I do not believe public shaming actually works, and I would say the same for our city agencies as I would our nonprofit providers.
1:06:51
I would not, for example, come up here and say, here are the nonprofit providers that are delinquent in their invoices and that we need to recoup more funds from.
1:07:00
Similarly, I just don't believe fundamentally that public shaming is the way in which we would get providers and city agencies to really meet the moment.
1:07:09
Like I said, and Director Yu said, a lot of what they work on is publicly available and I think that is a really proactive way you and our external partners should hold us accountable for meeting our goals.
Kim Yu
1:07:23
Thank you.
1:07:23
Thank you Michael.
1:07:24
I would just add, so thank you for the plug for Passport Public.
1:07:28
Our team is very proud of it.
1:07:30
It does provide a lot of transparency in particular for our vendors.
1:07:35
It lists upcoming solicitation opportunities.
1:07:38
It lists status of current solicitations, meaning when things are due, when there may be an expected award.
1:07:47
In addition to Passport Public, the colleagues at MOX will always tell us that we have so much data because the city does so much contracting, but really harnessing that data and putting it into reporting tools so that it is easily digestible and you can actually do something with it is a challenge that we continue to face.
1:08:08
And I'm pleased to announce that we are looking in this fiscal year, maybe in the fall of this year, we will roll out a set of vendor reports that are going to be externally facing.
1:08:20
The vision is that you log into Passport and you have a dashboard or a reporting tool that really is catered to you as the vendor.
1:08:33
It pulls contracts you're already awarded and it displays that for you.
1:08:38
It pulls solicitations that you've submitted to and that display it displays it to you.
1:08:43
In the future future state it also hopefully will give you a snapshot of you've submitted this invoice, it's been pending on the clock for this amount of days, or these are all your invoices that have been paid.
1:08:57
We're gonna see through that this calendar year.
1:09:00
And I certainly believe as Executive Director Sadio has you know time and time gone back to transparency and providing information that's actionable is really the principle that we're trying to chase.