If Gov. Jerry Brown decides to sign AB 522 — legislation that would require the Department of Technology to formulate a system for measuring IT vendors’ performance on state contracts — it will be against the wishes of advocates for the technology industry.
On Friday, Sept. 18, industry organizations CompTIA, IT Alliance for Public Sector (ITAPS) and TechNet sent a letter to Brown requesting the veto. The Governor’s Office said it does not generally comment on bills sent to the governor.
“While we understand the need for accountability by all contractors that provide goods and services to the state — whether they be providers of information technology (IT) goods and services or highway and bridge contractors — we do not believe this measure is appropriate nor necessary …,” they wrote.
The groups cited three main reasons for the veto request of AB 522. View the letter here.
The tech coalition wrote the bill “lacks clarity” and does not include needed details about how the assessment report would be used: “Should there be a less than positive grade assessed against a contractor, will that negative rating (or bad grade) remain on the contractor’s performance record for one year, five years — or ten to twenty years?”
The groups also claim AB 522 would not include a two-way evaluation, meaning the performance of state agencies and departments on IT contracts would not be factored in to a vendor’s performance assessment.
The coalition also said the bill is redundant because the California Department of Technology has separately initiated its own effort to develop an IT vendor report card, with a pilot slated for 2016.
“While we fully understand that assessing the performance of a vendor is a fair element of project implementation, it is our belief that this additional statutory requirement is not necessary to achieving that goal,” the groups wrote.
AB 522 was introduced by first-year Assemblymember Autumn Burke, D-Inglewood. At the request of the tech industry, earlier this year the bill was amended to limit the performance assessments to “reportable” IT projects under the Department of Technology’s oversight.
