City Non-Profit Contracting Task Force

Citywide Contract Task Force- Forms Subcommittee

Purpose: A Citywide Contracting Task Force has been established by the Board of Supervisors. The basic goal of the Task Force is to standardize, simplify and streamline the contract process both between City Departments and within individual Departments and. The Forms Subcommittee, one of four subcommittees of the Task Force, is responsible for recommending changes to the contract exhibits/addendums (focus on budget) with the goal of standardization, simplification and streamlining. This Subcommittee will not address the boilerplate, which is being analyzed by a different subcommittee.

Recommendations of the Forms Subcommittee

(1) Create a simplified, standard set of contract/budget forms to be used by City Departments (contract exhibits/addendums only) that do not duplicate information requirements from one exhibit/addendum to the next.

Rationale: City Departments often ask for the same information using different forms, which results in a duplication of effort by the contractor. Additionally, existing forms often request the same information in more than one place creating redundancy and extra work. Finally, some contract requirements established to address historical problems may no longer be necessary, but continue to be used.

Follow-Up: The term "simplified" needs to be defined to indicate what exactly would and wouldn't be included. Different Departments have different levels of requirements, so it will have to be determined what becomes a standard, and what is outside of the standard. Also, the term General Fund would need to be defined because the forms may change depending on that definition.

(2) Reconfigure the Forms Subcommittee to include a broader City representation

Rationale: The original membership of the Subcommittee did not include all of the Departments likely to be impacted by contract changes. The representation should include at least Public Health, Human Services, Mayor's Office of Community Development, Aging and Adult Services, and Children, Youth and their Families, as well as non-profit contractors. Each representative should be able to (1) represent his/her Department in recommending changes, and (2) have sufficient knowledge of the contract forms to know what can be changed without adversely impacting a Department's ability to meet State, Federal and local requirements.

Follow-Up: Subcommittee Chair should advise the major unrepresented Departments that (a) a subcommittee has been convened to standardize Citywide contract exhibits, and (b) their presence at this meeting is desired to ensure that proposed changes to the contract documents do not adversely impact their ability to meet funding agency requirements.

(3) Recommendation: Each Department should conduct an internal process to develop a thorough understanding of all contract requirements prior to reconvening the Forms Subcommittee.

Rationale: To make decisions on form changes, each Departmental representative must understand clearly the impact of a change to his or her Department, as well as the reasons behind each requirement. Without an initial internal process, this knowledge may not exist in one place, which will make representation on the Forms Subcommittee difficult, particularly for the larger departments who have multiple divisions with varying requirements.

Follow-Up: Subcommittee Chair should advise all Forms Subcommittee members to conduct an internal review process of their contracts prior to the reconvening of the Forms Subcommittee. In this internal process, the following questions should be discussed:

· Why are we asking for something? Is it a State, Federal or Local (Standard of Care, Commission, Board of Supervisor) requirement?

· Do we still need the information?

· Is the same information requested in more than one part of contract, and if yes can it be consolidated?

· Is the existing contract format/form the same format/form required by a funding agency for reporting purposes, or can the format/form be revised?

· Are there instances where if multiple sections contract for the same service, we can standardize the definition, or is it possible to standardize the performance measures so that the contractor can use the same information to respond to all Dept. sections? (also part of Monitoring Practices Subcommittee)

· What changes can be made to the forms to make them as simple and standardized as possible?

Implementation

(1) Departments complete internal review process by September 30

(2) Forms Subcommittee reconvenes the first Thursday in October to discuss Departmental recommendations

(3) Forms Subcommittee completes recommendations for revised forms by November 30

(4) Contract Task Force reviews and approves recommendations by mid-January

(5) Departments conduct contractor training of new forms by end of February

(6) FY03-04 Contracts will be created using new forms if Forms are completed by January (?)