My Tax Dollars at Work
July 2nd, 2009
The State of Oregon is going to rename and refocus the Economic & Community Development Department. New name: Business Oregon. And since they’re going to need a new website, they’ve put out this RFP.
Gotta love it! They’ve got a $90,000 budget for this baby. Quite a piece of change! However, read page nine, section 2.2, Requested Proposal Content and Scored Criteria:
“2) Designs 25 points max.
Submit one (1), but no more than three (3) design options incorporating all stated specifications in 1.1.3 Proposed Statement of Work. Each design submitted may be no more than three (3) levels deep.
Yep. SPEC DESIGN is required to bid for a government contract. OK, not REQUIRED, it’s just worth 25% of total bid “points”. So, what they’re saying is that they want bidders to have already completed 25% of the work in the hopes of landing the remaining project components to get paid.
Wow!
Unfortunately, I’m neither willing nor able to GIVE AWAY $22,500 worth of design. But then, who is?
You’d think by now I’d be immune to the spec requests. The something for nothing. The disrespect of design professionals. I’m no naive kid just out of school, falling for exploitative sites like crowdspring.
Hell no! I’m an avid supporter of NO-SPEC and follower of SpecWatch and Crowdsink.
But this RFP REALLY burns me.
Why?
Because, dammit–I’m an Oregon resident and they’re using my tax dollars!!