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