State keeps secrets on $40 million plan to outsource state jobs

The two state contracts, with renewals, could be worth about $40 million.

Both would outsource state jobs under the guise that the pandemic makes these moves necessary. The plan would shift work now being done by state employees to contract workers.

The administration department, headed by Kelly Tshibaka, is handling this operation. Her department has refused to release details on the proposals, applying unwarranted secrecy and requiring that I submit a public records request, which I did on Aug. 9. No response yet from the Dunleavy administration.

One of Tsibaka’s proposals deals with personnel management, a six-month proposal budgeted at $5.6 million, which could be renewed for two years, a total cost of $28 million.

The second proposal deals with quality assurance and portfolio management, a six-month proposal budgeted for $3.2 million, which could be renewed for two years. It’s not clear, but a state document suggests that a full year would be 35 percent more than six months. That would put the full cost at more than $11 million.

The personnel contract is for phases two and three of the “pandemic preparedness plan.” The management contract is to oversee the work of the contractors hired for the preparedness plan. The total cost over the next two-and-a-half years could be $40 million.

The state released the request for proposals on July 24. For both contracts, replies were due on Aug. 3 at 1 p.m., an unreasonable period for contracts of this magnitude.

For both contracts, the state claimed it could evaluate them on Aug. 4 and issue a notice that it intended to award contracts on Aug. 5.

Setting aside one business day for review tells me that the recipients had been selected in advance and that the procurement process was a show trial, not to be taken seriously.

After protests, the state gave two more days to contractors to respond to the personnel management, but still claimed it would analyze the results and pick the recipient in one business day.

I’ve asked the state for details on who applied for these contracts and who was selected as the recipients, but the Dunleavy administration is keeping the information secret with no justification.

I’ve been told by sources that Tandem Motion, a company that did work for the department last year under a subcontract, is the likely recipient of the personnel contract. Perhaps it is Collins Alliance, a company chosen under a no-bid contract last year to work for the state.

Cara Griffith, the head of Tandem Motion, told Department of Environmental Conservation employees, in a now-deleted video, that she was under contract to the administration department.

The Seattle company registered with the state of Alaska on Oct. 5. It didn’t have an office in Alaska, just a registered agent in Kenai. The company says it is a “workforce strategy consulting firm.”

Griffith served on the “Human Resources Enterprise Business Model Steering Committee,” an effort by Tshibaka to revamp HR for the state.

Tshibaka said later that Tandem Motion was not a state contractor, but a subcontractor to Collins Alliance, which received a no-bid contract for HR consolidation.

Responding a column last November, Tshibaka justified the work with Collins Alliance this way:

“To successfully accomplish the HR consolidation required by an Administrative Order, DOA has relied on Collins Alliance’s intimate knowledge of SOA (State of Alaska) culture and organizational protocols, and has implemented LDP principles and tools, such as action learning teams, CoachMotivation, one-on-one coaching, and peer2peer teams. DOA signed a sole source contract with Collins Alliance for the HR consolidation project on August 14, 2019. A sole source contract was justified under AS 36.30.300 because it was proven that this contractor team was best suited for the project given: Their experience and expertise with the State of Alaska. Their proven effectiveness in organization development. And an analysis which found that outsourcing to a new vendor that did not have the in-depth knowledge of the State’s government process would cost considerably more money than going with a vendor that already had established knowledge and expertise.”

The two new contracts now under review were to have taken effect on Aug. 14, which is the one-year anniversary of the Collins Alliance contract.

The new personnel management contract says that one-year experience with the state was preferred. That means that Collins Alliance would qualify under that category as preferred.

The way to end the guesswork is for the Dunleavy administration to release the full details, and explain why the response and evaluation period was so limited. If Collins Alliance or Tandem Motion was selected in advance, the administration is making a mockery of the state procurement process.

Then the administration can explain phase one, phase two, and phase three and why outsourcing state jobs to an Outside contractor is in Alaska’s interest, all under the guise of the pandemic response.

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