Florida has accepted proposals from vendors for a new child welfare system through a supposedly competitive bidding process that was anything but.
While the process seems competitive on paper, the system eventually selected by the state is already locked in to relying on a proprietary software platform, Salesforce, that has a track record of falling short.
A recent example of its deficiencies is on full display in California, where the state's department serving vulnerable youths is currently in the thick of a costly, slow-motion train wreck.
The state estimates the California Automated Response and Engagement System has cost taxpayers there a whopping $1.7 billion over the past decade. Salesforce isn't the lone culprit of the California government's farcical buildout, but they've done little to improve the situation since they became the lead vendor four years ago.
It would only be mild hyperbole to say Salesforce and Golden State Gov. Gavin Newsom are the dynamic duo of ineptitude, and it's a one-two punch in the face to the state's most vulnerable children.
Or at least it will be if the system meets its projected 2026 launch.
To be sure, public procurement is a complicated beast, and sometimes companies fail on one project but succeed on others. Salesforce has done what is by all accounts good work for Florida's state universities and multiple municipalities.
It's great that an 18-year-old can sign up for courses from the comfort of their couch; it's cool that municipalities are better able to route phone calls to proper departments; and it's nice to know government contractors such as CDR Maguire have software to run their operations more efficiently.
But those are matters of convenience. Properly serving the children and families who rely on the services provided by the Florida Department of Children and Families is, in many cases, a matter of life or death.
Florida's budget to improve the software supporting the services — and the hardworking social workers who deliver them — is $25 million for the 2023-24 fiscal year. Much could be written about how these vital workers and programs deserve more funding, but the reality is there are budgets to balance and lawmakers (and the voters who put them in power) are not about to write a California-style blank check to DCF.
That makes it all the more critical that Florida get this right. The logical first step: holding a competitive procurement process that is bathed in sunshine and willing to consider software platforms that aren't reverse-engineered from a dot-com-bubble relic designed to help telemarketers, insurance agents and used car salesmen earn their proverbial cup of coffee.
Unfortunately, DCF skipped that step.
And there are other issues with the company that are, in Ron DeSantis' Florida, "problematic."
Salesforce is an unabashedly "woke" company that is known for using its economic power like a cudgel. Just last year, Salesforce's CEO, Marc Benioff, threatened to leave any state that enacted abortion bans after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. And in 2015, the company threatened to leave Indiana, and take 2,300 jobs with it, after the state passed its Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
The company's liberal bent was on display as recently as last week, when its Indianapolis HQ played host to the National Conference of State Legislators — a nominally nonpartisan event that, in practice, promotes big government liberalism and Newsom-style anti-business legislation.
That's about as far from DeSantis' Florida as a company can get, and although sources close to DeSantis assure Florida Politics she is not, one could be forgiven for thinking DCF Secretary Shevaun Harris is on board with the company creed.
"I can tell you without any ambiguity that Secretary Harris is 100% on Gov. DeSantis's team. I can only imagine this procurement is a result of deep state liberals attempting to sneak one by in an effort to embarrass both the Secretary and the Governor," according to a lobbyist close to the DeSantis administration, granted anonymity due to the sensitive nature of procurements.
A former state government official with knowledge of the procurement process said DCF's insistence on using Salesforce is almost certainly a swampy "deep state" ploy to give a cushy contract to a company that is repackaging inferior software — and that they wouldn't be surprised if this sole-source deal was struck unbeknownst to Harris.
There's a way for Harris to prove them right: Open up the procurement process to all vendors, no matter their platform, and let the best product win.
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