ISSUE AREA 2: Purchasing Division Should Improve the Collection of Certain
Management Information
Certain management information is not collected by the Purchasing Division that is useful
to improve the procurement process, and identify areas that may need improvement. This
information includes Quality Assistance (QA) reviews, vendor performance complaints, and
vendor protests. The Executive Director of Purchasing indicated that QA reviews are not
conducted on a formal level because Purchasing does not have an appropriate number of staff.
Having QA reviews performed on a regular basis could possibly indicate whether or not agencies
are conforming to proper purchasing procedures.
The Executive Director does not monitor vendor performance complaints, but he indicated
that written vendor performance reports occur in less than 1% of all transactions. However, there
are many more verbal complaints by state agencies to Purchasing Buyers or to the Executive
Director. There is a benefit in requiring agencies to submit vendor performance forms on good or
bad performance on contracts with a value greater than a certain amount. If vendors know ahead
of time that their performance will come under a certain amount of scrutiny, then these vendors
would be more apt to deliver their goods and/or services in a timely and efficient manner.
There are basically three different levels of protests that a vendor can pursue: 1st, 2nd, and
court level. Of all the contracts that are awarded each year, the Executive Director estimates that
approximately less than 1% result in any type of protest. Currently, Purchasing does not keep
records of the number of protests that reach the 1st, 2nd, or court level. Keeping a complete and
accurate record of all protests can be a good management tool used to gauge the performance of the
procurement system. For instance, if records of protests were kept, then Purchasing could
monitor whether or not there was an increase in the number of protests from year to year.