The Bottom Line - Fall 2020 - 18

OMA OFFICE OF CONTRACTS -
RISING TO COVID'S CHALLENGE
By Dorothy Fortune, Director
Supported by team members Drakus Wiggins,
Anthony Stover, Andrea Simpson, Yemarshet
Kebede, Peter Lloyd, Tonya Mills, Chrishelle
Minor, Lisa Pierson, Carla Roane, James
Crenshaw, Samira Davis, Crystal FarmerLinder, and Sharon Guilford.

hen the Office of Contracts team
packed up their laptops on March
13, I sent them home with one goal in
mind... make sure that you have everything
you need to telework for a two-week trial
period. On that day, none of us knew that
the two weeks would extend to six months
and counting. But the team rose to the
challenge.

About half of the team already had access
to VPN and we got rapid and amazing support from the OCIO to get the remaining
team members VPN within the first week at
home. The whole team was already familiar
with TEAMS so we began daily check-ins to
make sure everyone had access to the systems they needed to ensure they could successfully work from home. The next immediate challenge was electronic submission
of Council packages. We were able to work

18 | THE BOTTOM LINE

seamlessly with our partners at OGC and
the Council Secretary to create a streamlined process for transmitting the packages
for review prior to electronic submission of
the packages.
Ensuring that executives all had e-signature capability was the next challenge. Once
again, the OCIO team partnership came in
to play, and they worked with us to procure
the necessary additional licenses. The final
frontier for the Office of Contracts was an
electronic procurement process from cradle
to grave. Fortunately, our office already
had a contract management database.
Our vendor quickly created the capability
to accept solicitations in the system and
be able to have our subject matter experts
have electronic access to evaluate proposals remotely. We utilized Teams to meet
with our Source Selection Evaluation Board
(SSEB) and continue the procurement process without interruption.
I see an underlying theme in our ability
to be successful... partnership and adaptability. Our OCIO partners, our OGC partners, and our Council partners all rose to the
occasion to adapt our paper processes to

The Bottom Line - Fall 2020

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