BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 558
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Date of Hearing: May 6, 2015
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Jimmy Gomez, Chair
AB
558 (Low) - As Amended March 26, 2015
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Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program: NoReimbursable: No
SUMMARY:
This bill
AB 558
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1)Requires, for information technology (IT) procurements, the
use of electronic means, whenever possible, for (a) the
transmission of rules and requirements to vendors for a given
procurement and (b) the submission of bids and requests for
proposals (RFPs) by vendors.
2)Requires any rules and requirements for an RFP for IT
procurements, and changes to such rules, to be posted,
whenever possible, on the websites of the Department of
General Services (DGS) and the Department of Information
Technology (CalTech).
FISCAL EFFECT:
Any costs to DGS and CalTech should be minor and absorbable.
COMMENTS:
1)Purpose. According to the author, "The current laws governing
IT procurement are outdated, as there are several statutory
requirements for the processing of paper documents and the
posting of notices in public places. These burdensome
practices require procurement professionals to process and
post paper documents outside of any automated systems and
require extensive physical storage for all paper documents."
For the last 15 years, the Legislature changed state laws to
permit the electronic submission of documents to state
agencies, including business filings, income tax returns,
professional license renewals, driver or vehicle license
renewals, campaign finance reports, voter registration
applications and more. For complex IT projects, however,
AB 558
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bidders are still required to submit documents on paper to
state agencies.
This bill intends to streamline state IT procurement by
allowing state agencies to use electronic means whenever
possible for the submission and receipt of bids and cost
proposals and requires DGS and CalTech to post certain project
documents on the Internet, whenever possible. AB 558 is
sponsored by TechAmerica.
2)Comments. The term "whenever possible" does not relate to any
standard, such as cost, time, or technological capability. A
better term would be "whenever feasible." In addition, it is
unclear why changes to the terms of an RFP would need to be
posted on the departments' websites, as the state eProcurement
system is intend to be the state's official web portal for
this information. The departments note that, later this year,
the state FI$Cal system will become the state's eProcurement
system.
Analysis Prepared by:Chuck Nicol / APPR. / (916)
319-2081
AB 558
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