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The RFP and IT Logistics For Washington's "Pot Czar"

Posted by Soulskill on from the not-the-best-resume-builder dept.

Esther Schindler writes "Last fall, the state of Washington passed a marijuana legalization referendum, and needed to acquire an outside consultant to run the program. 'As it normally does, the state put out a request for proposal for a consultant to run the new legal marijuana program,' writes Ron Miller. 'As word leaked out that there was an RFP open for what essentially was a "pot czar," the floodgates opened. It would be the most popular RFP in the state's history. The Liquor Control Board needed a way to process these requests quickly and cheaply.' In a typical RFP scenario, they would get maybe half a dozen responses. This one got close to 100. Miller writes about the cloud workflow required to solve the task: 'He chose these particular tools because they all had open APIs, which allowed him to mash them together easily into the solution. They were easy to use, so reviewers could learn the system with little or no training, and they were mobile, so users could access the system from any device. In particular he wanted reviewers to be able to use the system on a tablet.' I suppose this could have been written about more mundane RFPs, but I bet you'll find this more interesting than most."

13 of 117 comments (clear)

  1. Probably not just about pot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I imagine this was so popular because of the chance to run a pot legalization program as a consultant. This would be a multi-year job, but Washington State will likely not be the last state to implement this. The consultancy who wins this bid can then bid to help other states in the future, with the only credible claim of reliable experience with this issue. Being the winner of this project would be akin to striking oil.

    1. Re:Probably not just about pot by swb · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I can't help but think that the pot business now is something like the Internet was circa about 1991. There was a sense it was going to be a big deal and there was going to be a lot of money made, but nobody quite knew how to do it right away.

      And like the Internet, I'll be looking back 20 years from now amazed at how much money has been made off it and how it's universally accepted, just like the Internet.

    2. Re:Probably not just about pot by pspahn · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Indeed. A friend of mine interviewed with a local dispensary (Colorado) a couple of weeks ago, she would be doing the books.

      Granted, this is a medial dispensary, and not the type of "pot shop" that would come as the result of legalization, but I imagine the two won't be far off...

      So, as I was saying, she interviewed and, since she's smart, she was asking specific questions about how they operate. Apparently, part of her job would involved making cash deposits to the bank via an ATM at the mall. Yes. That's how they are doing it right now... cash deposits to an ATM at the mall.

      The ATM in this case belongs to Bank of America, and they are chosen for the account precisely because they do not have a presence in Colorado (other than ATMs). I'm not really sure the rest of the details, but it is clear that there are plenty of methods, especially in regards to how dispensaries run their finances, that need to be refined.

      --
      Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
    3. Re:Probably not just about pot by swb · · Score: 3, Informative

      There was a story about this exact kind of thing on NPR's Planet Money:

      http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/12/04/166514067/episode-420-the-legal-marijuana-business

      They talk to legitimate business people trying to run a dispensary and handling money is a huge problem for them. It's almost nearly impossible to get a commercial bank account and really complicated to try to run it on a cash basis. The banks are paranoid because its illegal at a Federal level and there's all kinds of ways for the Feds make pain -- money laundering laws, revoking Federal bank charters, seizing assets, and so forth. Suppliers, landlords, employees, the government, customers -- everybody wants to get paid and cash is really clumsy and sometimes not an option.

      And of course, they want to be consumer friendly and take plastic, but good luck without banking. I may be remembering this wrong, but they use the gimmick of the low-rent cash machine which will also do purchases-as-cash-advance-for-a-fee so credit card users can "buy" without a cash advance from the credit card company's perspective.

      At the end of the day, a pot dispensary should be no different than any other specialty retailer -- doing payroll mostly electronically with printed checks for those who want them, a line of credit at the bank, and various accounts to park cash in or fund check writing, and taking all the usual plastic money from customers.

    4. Re:Probably not just about pot by TheRaven64 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Portugal did it, and they have the single largest body of people in rehab of any country on Earth now

      You say that as if it's a bad thing. Portugal shifted from regarding drug addiction as a crime to regarding it as a medical condition, and now they have the largest number of people with this condition receiving treatment. And you think this is bad? Meanwhile, the USA has the largest number of people of any country in the world (more than the USSR at its height) in prisons. The majority of these are for drug-related offences. How's that working out as an alternative?

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  2. Huh? This was a problem? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Receiving less than a hundred proposals was a problem? Reading simple documents on a tablet and submitting responses was a problem? I fail to see how this required anything more than email and a simple spreadsheet, database, or website.

  3. $7800 by hawguy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Did they really need to create a $7800 (not including license fees) RFP review system when there were only 100 applicants? And now the company that was paid to create it is selling it to other agencies.

    1. Re:$7800 by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "Did they really need to create a $7800 (not including license fees) RFP review system when there were only 100 applicants? And now the company that was paid to create it is selling it to other agencies."

      My thought too. Looks like Washington is not immune from the typical State bureaucracy syndrome. My guess would be that at least 80% of the responses would weed themselves out in the first couple of paragraphs, which might take maybe a day to go through.

      The rest might need more thorough vetting, but hell, that's only 20.

    2. Re:$7800 by turp182 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Can it be used for all future RFP requests? Do the users like it better (more convenient, easier)?

      For $7,800, that would be incredible ($10,000 limit I understand, not much for such a project in my opinion). Think about what corporations spend on small IT projects (internally or externally developed).

      I'm assuming the developer was familiar with all of the tools and already had ample experience piecing them together. The time frame makes it so.

      --
      BlameBillCosby.com
  4. Re:100?? by Nyder · · Score: 4, Funny

    Dude, 100 applicants? Fucking out of this world. Hell ya, dude, dude!!!!! I got the greatest fucking idea of all time. Quit camping on the bowl, give me a hit. Thanks dude.... What were we talking about? No, I hadn't seen the that cat video, no, dude, wait, the Pot Czar applications. You get them all in a room, and smoke out. Fuck ya, dude, I'm talking smoke out of the century. The last app standing gets the job. Fuck I'm a genius. WTF dude? don't spill the bong...

    --
    Be seeing you...
  5. Re:100?? by jspoon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So big deal, 100... It is not uncommon for a science dept at a university to get 400 applications for a tenure track position.

    Or even as many as 420.

  6. Re:Lazy by foniksonik · · Score: 3, Insightful

    An RFP for a complicated consulting job can be 50 pages long or more with additional addendums and appendixes.

    I wrote an RFP for a project with a medical device company and it was 30+ pages.

    These are dense pages also. We're basically talking about a draft project plan or business plan. Milestones, deliverables, ROI calculations, tables of data, lists of requirements, software, hardware, etc

    100 applications would be at minimum 1000 pages of details.

    --
    A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
  7. They've already selected their "pot czar" by JDG1980 · · Score: 5, Informative

    This wasn't mentioned in the article or the summary, but Washington State has apparently already completed the selection process. The contract was awarded to BOTEC Analysis, a consulting firm run by drug policy analyst and blogger Mark Kleiman. You can watch a CNN interview with Kleiman here. Kleiman's blog posts on drug policy are archived here.