DAS officials brief subcommittee on statewide procurement process, equity study

Deputy Director Debbie Dennis and Chief Procurement Officer Steven Nelson of the Department of Administrative Services told the General Government Subcommittee Thursday that Oregon’s statewide procurement system routes buying requests through a required sequence and uses statewide price agreements, training and an electronic procurement platform to manage hundreds of millions of dollars in purchases.

The briefing matters because procurement decisions affect state agency operations, local governments that participate in cooperative purchasing and efforts to direct spending to businesses owned by historically underrepresented groups, said Debbie Dennis, deputy director at DAS.

Dennis and Nelson described the agency’s “buy decision” sequence: agencies first check the state surplus property program, then the Oregon Forward program (contractors that employ people with disabilities), next Oregon Corrections Enterprises, and finally the open market. ‘‘The first place we are expected to go is to our state surplus property program,’’ Dennis said, and agencies ‘‘are required to evaluate the services of Oregon Forward contractors prior to going to the…