Union leaders at Chippewa Valley Technical College felt something wasn’t right with their college’s rapidly expanding relationship with SunGard Higher Education, formerly Collegis, Inc.

The college’s initial $1.75 million contract with Collegis signed in 2002 had rapidly ballooned through a series of no-bid contract amendments. By 2007, the contract had been amended eight times and grew to a total commitment of $15.9 million.

The scope of the contract also underwent significant expansion. Under the original 3-year, $1.75 million contract, Collegis was to provide CVTC with information technology management and consulting services. For example, the contract called for an on-site Collegis employee to serve as CVTC’s Chief Information Officer, managing the college’s information technology functions.

By the eighth amendment, the contract’s scope had grown to include management and consulting services plus a wide array of other functions: providing onsite programmers and various other onsite IT staff; website development; network administration; workstation technical support; telephony; media support services; database administration; UNIX administration; remote helpdesk; and a variety of online course development and academic services.

This expansion in the value and scope of the contract occurred outside the competitive bidding procurement process.

The faculty and support staff locals at CVTC (represented by WEAC and AFT-Wisconsin, respectively) grew increasingly fearful of the contract’s implications. Would the growing scope of the agreement result in the outsourcing of information technology jobs, threatening support staff members? What was the contract’s potential impact on the CVTC budget? Could potential improprieties result from a series of no-bid contracts? Facing these and other pressing questions, the two unions took action.

After digesting the contract and its multiple amendments, the unions began researching state and technical college procurement guidelines. The unions found internal technical college regulations that call for all procurement transactions to be “conducted in a manner that provides maximum open and free competition.”

The unions shared their information and concerns with the WTCS State Board and called on the Board to review the practice of amending service contracts.

After a lengthy review by the WTCS State Office, the unions heard word that their hard work paid off. WTCS procurement regulations were updated to ensure that:

• Contract length is now limited to five years with districts having the option of two one year extensions, and;
• Modifications to the scope of the original request for proposal and resulting contract shall be considered separate procurements and are required to follow appropriate procurement processes.

The CVTC case is an excellent example of what can be accomplished when faculty and support staff locals work together towards a common goal.

Posted June 12, 2008