December 28, 2011
Around Town – By Neal Tepel
City Comptroller John C. Liu has green-lighted technology contracts after the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) agreed to a $93 million reduction in the cost of the contracts. This follows six weeks of negotiations between the Comptroller’s office and DoITT. “We will continue to closely scrutinize, examine and, wherever possible, apply the budget scalpel to city contracts with expensive outside consultants,” said Comptroller Liu. “The $93 million savings here can surely be redirected to helping with the significant fiscal challenges we face in the near horizon. We thank DoITT and MOCS for their cooperation and efforts in this negotiation.”
On November 3, 2011, the Mayor’s Office of Contacts (MOCS) approved $290 million in contract extensions for IT services to City agencies. Comptroller Liu had expressed deep concerns about the contracts and said his office would examine them closely once they were submitted. In the weeks since MOCS approval, Comptroller Liu’s office has worked on this issue with DoITT and MOCS, and as a result of these negotiations the agencies agreed to the $93 million cost reduction. DoITT and MOCS also agreed to shorten the contracts’ time frame to 18 months from their original proposals of two years.
This is the latest example of contract savings Comptroller Liu’s office has been able to realize for the City’s taxpayers. Working with City Hall, the Comptroller’s office successfully put an end to the runaway spending related to, among other items, CityTime and the Emergency Communications Transformation Project (ECTP).
