Sections 25-53-5(o) and 25-53-123(1) of the Mississippi Code of 1972 require that all acquisitions of computer and telecommunications equipment and services costing in excess of $50,000 ($25,000 for projects funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) be based upon competitive and open specifications. ITS makes every effort to work with customers to ensure that both the statutory requirement for competitive and open specifications and the customer's business needs are met through the procurement process.
In certain situations, the most advantageous and cost-effective approach for the State may be to identify the brand of hardware or software in the specifications. If the requested product has significant features that are not available in similar products, if these features can be certified as business requirements for the requesting agency, and if the product is not competitively available from multiple resellers, the Sole Source process should be used. (See 013-030 Sole Source)
When there are other products available in the open market that would meet the customer's business objectives, the need to issue brand-name specifications must be well documented by the customer and closely examined and approved by ITS. To specify a brand name that is not a sole source, the State or the customer must have established an agency/institution "manufacturer standard" for the requested brand name product. It is important for the customer and ITS to work closely together on the process of establishing a manufacturer standard. Once the standard has been established, the requesting agency, in submitting a brand-name request to ITS, must provide documentation of the product as an agency/institution standard, including how the standard was established, the length of time the standard has been in place, any relevant volume information concerning the number of devices currently installed at customer site(s), and the timeframe in which the standard will be re-competed.
For an agency or institution, or a major facility within an agency or institution, to establish a brand-name (manufacturer) standard, all or most of the following guidelines must be met:
(1)The manufacturer standard must be established through a competitive procurement. It is highly desirable that the specifications used in this competitive process explicitly state that the results of the procurement will establish a manufacturer standard for the procuring entity. (2)The competitive procurement for establishing a standard must be for the majority of like devices owned by the procuring entity. If the initial purchase to be made under the competitive procurement is for fewer than the majority of like devices, the intent should be to replace the majority of devices with the established standard during the defined life of the standard (see (4) below). (3)The requesting entity should identify the practical benefits of setting a manufacturer standard. These benefits should be documented in terms of specific technical benefits related to interoperability/consistency or in terms of business benefits, possibly related to staff expertise and institutional knowledge base, parts inventories if maintenance is performed in-house, and/or the ability to leverage volumes for better discounts over a product lifecycle. Technical synchronization with peer governmental, educational, or research entities could be another valid justification for setting a standard. (4)The standard must be set for a defined period of time and be reexamined periodically. For example, it is expected that many agencies and institutions will replace most desktop devices on an n-year cycle. The length of the refresh cycle should be specified in the competitive procurement. The replacement procurement must be open to other manufacturers and to the potential of establishing a new standard for the next several years. Organizations that procure desktop devices on a staggered cycle should also re-compete on a reasonable timeframe, approximately every three to five years, and should specify this timeframe in the competitive procurement. Different types of equipment or products will have different lifecycles. While a competitive procurement for desktops would reasonably be conducted on a three to five year cycle, a router standard might only be competed on an eight to ten year basis. There are no hard and fast rules for these timeframes. The agency or institution should regularly examine the relative competitiveness of the product pricing and the cost-benefit of remaining with the standard, as long as the standard is in place. The following criteria are not appropriate for consideration in establishing or requesting a brand-name standard:
(1) The original procurement was made directly from the Express Products List rather than via a formal competitive process. (2) The original procurement was for a lower-end, less expensive technology, and the request asks that the standard be applied to a higher-end, more expensive technology (e.g., LAN switches cannot establish a standard for large enterprise network switches or routers). Standards are, within reasonable limits, device-specific. (3) The current procurement is a replacement for the majority of the organization's devices/products of this type. (4) The "brand" requirement is specified in terms of a reseller rather than a manufacturer. Standards must be at the manufacturer level. 36 Miss. Code. R. 2-10-210.4
25-53-5 (o); 25-53-123 (1)