The IT Alliance for Public Sector (ITAPS) introduced on Thursday new recommendations for aligning states' IT contract terms and conditions "as closely as possible to commercial contracting practices."
Doing so would make IT acquisition more efficient, improve vendor competition and make good use of taxpayer dollars, the industry group asserted.
"Our specific recommendations offer a menu of commercial best practices aligned to state IT terms and conditions, including minimizing the use of liability carve-outs, protecting commercial providers’ intellectual property (IP) and reserving ownership rights for the state for deliverables created specifically for the solution," ITAPS explained.
"Inflexible terms and conditions that disproportionately shift risk onto the vendor hinder efforts to engender competition among top technology providers and ultimately lead to higher costs for the State and its taxpayers. By narrowing the difference between commercial contracting practices and a state’s required terms and conditions, states will not only improve competition among vendors but also build a procurement process that operates more efficiently with fewer issues to negotiate," the best practices say.
The last few years, the state of California has worked on its "T&Cs" for cloud computing, Software as a Service, and other acquisition verticals, and has solicited input from the vendor community along the way.
View the best practices from ITAPS here.
