Contract Award Procedure
A description of all contractor searches must be accessible to the
public for at least two weeks prior to the last day proposals are
accepted, except in cases of time-critical emergencies. In cases
where a full description would compromise national defense, a full
description can be withheld until a requester has been
background-checked and has signed an agreement to maintain
confidentiality. In the case that supply of a full description is
delayed, requests must be accepted for at least two weeks following
the initial announcement, and proposals must be accepted for at least
two weeks following the last delivery of a full description.
The state must award contracts on the following bases: price, quality,
stability of support, and environmental impact. Price includes
initial research and development costs, unit fabrication costs, and
cost of repair. Quality includes ease of use, versatility, technical
performance under normal and exceptional operating conditions,
durability, lifetime, MTBF/MTTR, ease of repair, regularity of
behavior, and adherence to contract specifications. Stability of
support is the expectation that the organization fulfilling the
initial contract will persist long enough to provide technical support
and repair/replacements for the specified lifetime of the device, and
the degree to which proper continued operation of the device is
independent of this persistence and performance on the part of the
contractor. The minimization of environmental impact must be used to
discriminate between proposals of otherwise similar merit. Formulaic,
or otherwise more detailed, evaluative procedures for comparison of
competing proposals, can be specified by law in concordance with the
above.
Any device critical to national defense must be delivered with
complete technical plans sufficient to replicate the device
independently if necessary, including full source code for any
software if applicable. If the contractor so requests or at the
state's behest, these plans must be kept confidential.
No state contract can be awarded to a contractor for at least one year
following substantial non-performance, performance at a substantially
inflated cost, or substantially delayed performance, on a prior or
continuing contract. However, inadequate performance resulting from
circumstances beyond the contractor's control, e.g. natural disasters,
unforeseeable shortages and/or price increases in raw materials, or
legislation affecting the terms of the contract, wages, taxes, etc.,
can not lead to such a penalty.
No law can forbid or require the hiring of labor forces organized for
negotiation leverage (unionized) for fulfillment of state contracts,
or treat the union status of labor as a factor in the relative
evaluation of competing proposals.
The state cannot purchase products from individuals or incorporated
entities who have refused to sell to a private individual a product
they have sold to a state, and on the same price schedule as that
offered to that state, provided law does not preclude such purchase.
the price schedule for any product offered for sale to the state must
specify a single unit purchase price no greater than twice the
per-unit price for the greatest quantity scheduled, or for the
greatest quantity sold to the state, whichever price is lower. Such
purchase is contrary to law if the product contains classified
technology or information and the state has not provided a waiver or
license for the purchase. In the case that private purchase of a
product is precluded only by classification restrictions, a version of
the product with classified technology and information replaced by
non-classified technology and information, which provides maximum
possible functional and operational equivalence to the original
product, must be offered for sale to private individuals on a price
schedule equal to or lower than that of the original product. For
example, if a product contains a classified encryption module, the
version purchasable by private individuals must contain an
unclassified encryption module providing similar resistance to
known-ciphertext compromise of a key or plaintext, known-plaintext
compromise of a key, and forging of a data signature, by an attacker
with intimate knowledge of the algorithms implemented by the
encryption module.
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This is a preliminary draft. Pending changes are in The To-Do List