FOR RELEASE:

State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli today rejected a $7.5 billion state contract with Comsys, a company that won a bid from the State Office for Technology (OFT) to provide information technology (IT) support services for New York state agencies.  DiNapoli said OFT did not even know how much money it needed to spend on services, claiming the contract was worth $7.5 billion when his auditors say it should only be a fraction of that amount.

In the wake of this contract decision, DiNapoli will launch a full-scale procurement audit of OFT to examine OFT’s contracting and procurement practices.    

“These are tough times,” DiNapoli said.  “The last thing the state should do is waste taxpayer dollars.  In case OFT hasn’t noticed, the state can’t afford to waste $7, much less $7 billion.  My auditors are going to take a very close look at OFT’s procurement practices to be sure taxpayers are getting what they pay for.”

The rejected contract would have consolidated IT staff augmentation services (i.e. programmers and other IT professionals who are needed for temporary assignments).  DiNapoli said although the contract with Comsys IT Service dba Tapfin Process Solutions was intended to streamline services and save money, it would have actually driven costs higher than necessary due to that agency’s flawed procurement process.

DiNapoli’s auditors rejected the Comsys contract for the following reasons:

• OFT’s bid evaluation methodology was unreasonable and did not result in an award to the best-value vendor as required by law, and was thus far more expensive than necessary;
• OFT received and rejected a protest against the bid award from a competing bidder that DiNapoli considered valid; and
• OFT’s claim that the three year contract was valued at $7.5 billion far exceeds current state IT staff augmentation expenditures.