Managing by the Seat

From “Tech Talk Online,” Governing.com

Elsewhere in government, the problem isn’t vacant seats. It’s providing the technology the people filling those seats need. “Seat management,” in which a government contracts for computers and services on a per-user basis, is an increasingly popular way for governments to get up-to-date computer equipment without purchasing and managing the pieces themselves.

Virginia has a plan in the works to be the first state to implement a statewide seat-management program. Vendors, for a flat fee per seat, would be responsible for buying, planning, installing, configuring, testing, maintaining, repairing, upgrading and disposing of desktop computers. Virginia is now spending $600 million a year on technology and has close to 70,000 employee workstations. The state is in the midst of a request-for-proposal process and hopes to sign a three-year contract for seat management, with three different vendors, by this summer.

A major advantage of the program is that, because it amounts to leasing, it removes computers from the state budget as a capital expense, helping shield the cost of the technology from the political process. “Once it becomes an operating expense, it’s a recurring item and the legislature can’t stop it,” says Don Upson, secretary of technology.

Agencies will not be required to join the program, and Upson will gauge the contract’s success by how deeply seat management penetrates agencies.