How does your procurement process work?

I work for the government so its a nightmare. Now I might have some if this wrong as I dont do the purchasing itself but I am involved in setting up any hardware or virtual infrastructure ao here is what it looks like to me.

I recomend some products to my boss. Then he and the the purchasing steward who are both good people but will change just enough to screw it up. Like not ordering the proper storage controllers for the servers.

Anyhow I dont find this out until the end of the process. Like 12 people in the chain of command sign off on it any of who can deny it for some unfathomable political reason.

Then the real fun begins. It goes off to purchasing who puts it out to bid. Months will go by with no real way of knowing the progress which is usually none. We ask they ignore us. Pretty sure they lose it. Sometimes the bid is never put out and we just dont get the product we need.

So eventually the product is put out for bid. You would think it goes tobthe lowest bidder but no. Preference is given to veteran owned, minority businesses in economicly depressed areas. I am not sure what value they add to a Dell server except they tack on about 10-15% on top of the original quote we got from the manufacturer.

So then if it is a license that info will go to the purchasing agent who will never forward it to us. If it I physical it will go to the warehouse where it will be lost. They will claim they have no PO or other vital piece of info. Then when we send them the info 38 times Goodwill will deliver it.

They will call after 4pm on Friday to arrange shipment usually assuring they miss us and we play tag for a bit. Finally they will deliver the 20 servers to the office area not the data center and try to wiggle out of delivering it any way they can.

that's when I find out my boss (or sometimes some ransom person inbthat ordering chain) messed up the order and got the wrong thing.

/r/sysadmin Thread