Slashdot Mirror
Changing a School's Tech Disposal Policy?
An anonymous reader writes "I attend a state university where a new building has recently been put in, and a new budget put in place. They have decided to upgrade all the computer systems involved in the department, with a few slight exceptions. From my limited understanding, State policy is that we cannot just let things go, they have to be sent back to the state capital in order to take them off the books. Then they put them in the dumpster. I feel that this is a huge waste of useful machines (some are merely two years old), but I know not how to change this. Any suggestions, or does anyone know where Illinois dumps used tech?"
You might want to verify that they put them in the dumpster. I work in state government and all agencies here send old equipment to state surplus, which lesser funded agencies can get things out of and the leftovers are sold to the public at auctions. If your state government is just tossing all its surplus then you should contact someone in your state legislature about changing such a wasteful practice.
Dark clothing + ski masks + pick-up truck @ 3am ...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
FOXTROT UNIFORM CHARLIE KILO
after the equipment is taken off the books, it's sold to the brother-in-law of some administrator for $0.50/ton. He then cleans up the PCs and sells them to government schools (via a contract he has with the superintendent, who happens to be his nephew) for 150% of what their new value was.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
Have you looked at GovDeals at all? I work for a state agency in Missouri, and all of our equipment ends up being sold to the public through that site. I also notice that Illinois has a good deal of equipment there also.
Go to http://www.state.il.us/CMS/1_buying/statesurp.htm, which is the firs tlink on Google when searching for "Illinois state surplus auction" for more info.
Go to our state online auction site to see if they end up there, too.
There's a reason Central Management Services exists -- it's to provide the central management of the services all state agencies need to kkeep duplication of effort to a minimum. One thing all state agencies need is to dispose of surplus equipment.
I don't know much about Texas or Illinois (limited understanding of geography?). But, in at least one branch of the Fed, they're sent back to a central office and taken off the books. Then, they sit in large metal containers and wait until they're approved for excess so that they can be put out for auction. Then, they're forgotten about and left to age until they can't be sold. Finally, they're sent out for recycling or landfill.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
That's what we did when I worked as a student tech at Clemson University. Every year we made a bulk purchase of lab computers. Half the lab computers on campus got replaced. The next year the other half would be replaced (and it went back and forth such that lab machines were changed out every 2 years).
When a lab machine was retired from service, they were then distributed to the IT departments of the various colleges (though I'm sure most here understand this, I'll just explain: a University is usually broken down into smaller "colleges" even though they're all still the same school. I worked at the College of Business and Behavioral Science).
We then would clean up the machines, put a fresh image on them (since we got them in huge batches of identical configs they were easy to keep images for), and then send them out to the faculty that were running old machines. Naturally for faculty deemed special enough to deserve it they could also get a brand new computer bought during the purchase of the incoming lab machines as well.
When we finally got done with them, we'd send them to a surplus sale. The general public was free to come in and purchase them at whatever randomly low price the surplus department decided to ask for them (the prices are normally dirt cheap because we were essentially just ready to dispose of them, but since they're bought with tax dollars the public has to have a chance at aquiring surplus property).
I'm assuming that the disposal procedure is state law as I now work at another government organization in SC and the surplus procedure is pretty much the same. That can be a good place to pickup some parts though. 17" CRT monitors (which we're always getting rid of a few of since flat panels are all the rage now) generally get put up for $5. Pretty good spot to pick those up when someone needs one.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Usually the biggest pain is the stupid paperwork needed by the state to remove computers from inventory systems. They ought to just expire all computers from inventory after 5 years (or whatever), automatically.
Having worked at virginia tech's computer science department in the past for a few years, I can tell you that what you're saying is logical, but impossible in the current government system.
The inventory people basically accept goods in, give them to you, and expect to get them back. In our situation, after that happens, they auction them off (VT auctions are like every other month, in an old warehouse looking building). The paperwork is intense. But the long and short of it is that the department cannot do anything with the computers.
Problem two is that the inventory system at Tech doesn't account for depreciation. At all.
Case in point: We had a professor create what he called a "pedoplex", which was this huge gazebo (shoot arrows into it?) looking thing that was just banks and banks of hard drives. In 199X or whatever, it cost $1.5 MILLION DOLLARS pinky to lips. Now? We'd be hard pressed to sell it for scrap metal - and I'm not kidding. Well, anyway, the guy that was the contractor that built it for the professor after a while realized that the prof wasn't using it anymore, and was like "this thing is neat, I built it and I'm proud of my work". The professor basically gave it to the guy. He moved to Pennsylvania.
SO... every year, during inventory, someone would have to go UP to PA and walk into a storage locker and go "Pedoplex: One each, check!" and drive back. Not kidding at all. Then the guy moved to Austrailia. All of a sudden, in 2005, this freaking thing shows up in our inventory, marked as "missing", with a value of negative $1.5 million. Meaning even if we had been able to locate TWO (not to mention one) of everything on our inventory list, we were still waaaaaaay over quota for dollar amount of missing equipment.
What ensues? Did we call the guy and ask if we could get into his storage locker? Did we write the piece of equipment off? Did we mark its value to be, say, $5,000? No, none of those things. The administration called the guy a thief (he was given the device), said that we lost valuable state property and should be held accountable (wtf, i'm a sysadmin, not a gopher, and this was before I was employed), and started a bickering shouting match between inventory, provost, and the department.
Your tax dollars at work!
's ok, though, after the 2nd year in a row when the professor who makes $220,000/yr for 5 hours of work per week who's my boss told me "sorry there's no money for a raise, we'll just keep paying you the legal minimum we can pay you in your pay grade", I left all that crap behind and got a job working for Rackspace, which is waaaay more awesome.
~W
sig?
I work at a college in illinois (chicago to be exact) and we don't throw out old systems. Every few years when they feel necessary or professors complain they will replace our department computers. The computer support people delist them from use and mark them as storage. Then they sell the systems for dirt cheap to students and faculty (who get them for free). I don't know of any policies in place regulating how many systems employees can take but I'm working on acquiring number two right now. I assure you, at least not at this college, they are not tossed in the garbage. Not only is this wasteful and stupid but it is also against the law IIRC. Computer components are very hazardous to the environment. You can't just throw that stuff out. It has to be recycled or disposed of properly, like any hazmat or chemical material.
Most computer hardware is sold at surplus auctions four times a year in Illinois. I worked for Illinois government as a contractor for 9 years and saw countless pallets of PCs and Macs move through there. Lots of other cool stuff too, including a powered drafting table I picked up for $75. I locked the table flat and can raise and lower it depending if I want to work standing up or sitting down.
I'm really a low 5-digit Slashdotter, but this ID is where I am now.