Indiana Department of Administration
OneIndiana
Operating with New Efficiency (ONE) Indiana has improved the state's sourcing and negotiating leverage to benefit the state's overall budget.
OneIndiana has four key goals:
- Identify and improve the ways Indiana government buys goods and services.
- Identify and create savings for taxpayers by lowering prices and achieving better value on commonly purchased goods and services through effectively leveraging the state's purchasing volume.
- Evaluate specifications of goods and services being bought to ensure the optimal use of state dollars.
- Transfer knowledge to state procurement professional in procurement best practices.
OneIndiana is also improving the state's procurement capabilities by enabling statewide collaboration among agencies, centralizing coordination of procurement efforts while retaining local spending control, and ensuring knowledge sharing between procurement professionals.
An Approach that Works
To date, the state has analyzed spend in 41 purchasing categories, reviewed and re-written specs to meet the needs of multiple agencies, and negotiated new contracts that leverage the state’s aggregate volume. These actions have resulted in lower prices on thousands of goods and services from hundreds of vendors, saving the state more than $20 million over the length of the contracts. Recent savings examples:
- $5.5 million on computer equipment
- $4.3 million on office supplies
- $1.5 million on communication equipment
Sharing the Savings
Many government entities including cities and towns, public schools, county agencies, and public libraries qualify to buy off most of the State-negotiated contracts, including quantity purchase agreements (QPAs). By purchasing goods and services using state-negotiated contracts, local units of government can reap the benefits of the state’s purchasing volume while saving local employee time and effort, reducing staffing needs. And, because many of the state’s contracts use a tiered pricing structure based on total contract volume, by combining local purchasing volume with the state’s volume, everyone — both the state and locals —benefits from greater participation
Local Participation Made Easy
In the fall of 2008, IDOA launched oneindiana.net. oneindiana.net makes it easier for schools, libraries and locals to purchase products at prices negotiated by the state—all at no cost to schools, libraries or local governments.
- IDOA is funding the development of the searchable-only site and providing a free license to qualifying entities.
- The new system will be secure and credentials based.
- The platform can be expanded to provide a full e-Procurement solution that can be customized to meet local purchasing needs.
Getting the Word Out
- To date, more than 600 locals have pre-registered for a login for the new searchable-only website.
- IDOA has had more than 25 face-to-face meeting with larger locals resulting in tremendous, positive responses.
- IDOA is working with the Department of Local Government Finance to leverage their local government contacts, making sure those in charge of the money have the information they need to make the best purchasing decisions.
- IDOA’s Procurement Division intends to have vendors provide reports of new accounts set up and dollars spent since we launched the initiative.