English: New York Mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Mayor Bloomberg has announced the formation of a new non-profit corporation that will operate free of the usual city procurement rules, salary limits and legislative oversight to provide a bureaucratically powerful, highly skilled, centralized overseer of technology projects. The hope is to reduce the city’s reliance on highly paid outside contractors for project conception, development and execution.
The main goal of the newly formed NY Technology Development Corporation is to grant those responsible for tech projects enough authority to compel agency commissioners to cooperate, make timely decisions and accept compromises that might require them to change the way they do business. However, it will not replace the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications – just take on some of its tasks.
Under the new plan, control is decided by a simple test: if a project will cost more than $25 million, or more than $5 million and involves more than one agency, then the Corporation will control the project from start to finish. The corporation will oversee design, vendors, installation and training.
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