Is City of Los Angeles I.T. Department Working A Secret Deal With Goog le?

FRIDAY NIGHT UPDATE: Been offline for a couple days, but I am back online, now. Been having a lot of fun out and about the community. Look foward to taking a nice trip out to Sunland-Tujunga on Saturday, now that I don't have to worry about trucks and hazardous waste from Home Depot in the area.

Here's something that captured my attention: If this is true, how do you feel about the City of L.A. allowing a private company (Google) access to city business? Raises some questions, maybe.

From Zuma's Inbox: ZumaDogg@Gmail.com

ZD,

Once again, the City is engaging in suspicious contracting out of City work. I don't have evidence that Google is paying off City officials, but it sure smells.

CITY I.T. DEPT WORKING SECRET DEAL WITH GOOGLE
1/15/09

EAA obtained credible information from a City Council source that the City's I.T. Department intends to contract out I.T. Groupwise/email work to an outside vendor, Google, and has already worked out the details with the vendor. This has been done without going through the proper meet and confer process required by the City's Charter. More importantly, the City has selected the vendor Google without issuing an RFP (Request For Proposal) as required by the City's own ordinance. Our source tells us that the City intends to send out the RFP tomorrow even though they've already selected the vendor. This disregard for the proper process raises suspicion that the City may be engaged in a corrupt contracting practice.

The City has also failed to notify affected labor organizations, including EAA, so that those organizations have an opportunity to request meet and confer on the issue.

Even though our source verified that there is no intent to lay off any EAA represented employees, this is still an underhanded way to conduct business and may even be illegal.

Our source also indicated that Robin Kramer, from the Mayor's office, was involved in this process along with the General Manager of the I.T. Department with whom she's had a long standing relationship that existed prior to the hiring of this General Manager.

EAA is conveying a meet and confer demand to the CAO and the I.T. Department. EAA's General Counsel is investigating legal remedies we may seek on behalf of our affected members.

ZumaTimes.com

P.S. A lot of good stuff from people in my inbox. Will get to it all this weekend. THANKS FOR THINKING OF ZD!

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