DAS: Oregon Buys covers solicitations but five agencies, SPOTS cards and user adoption complicate full spend reporting

Department of Administrative Services Chief Administrative Officer Debbie Dennis told the Joint Committee on Ways and Means subcommittee on General Government on March 3 that the Oregon Buys procurement system has completed phase 1 and that the state is still working to capture a complete view of total state spending.

“We finally went completely live in the system with all of our agencies in September of 2023,” Dennis said. “There are 2 primary categories of spend that are not captured in Oregon Buys.”

Dennis said all 80 agencies adopted phase 1, the posting-of-solicitations and contract-award functionality, but five agencies have exceptions for phase 2 (purchase orders, invoicing, receiving and requisitions). Those agencies are the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Oregon Employment Department, the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT), Oregon Parks, and the Department of Corrections.

She described reasons for each exception: Fish and Wildlife and the Employment Department requested extra time to implement phase 2; ODOT cited its separate statutory authority and longstanding highway procurement system (AASHTOWare) used for highway projects and asked for 12–18 months to assess migration; Oregon Parks uses a distributed inventory system that the agency says provides functionality Oregon Buys does not; and the Department of Corrections operates…