Is Miami-Dade trapped by big-tech legacy systems?

Concentration of technology contracts in fewer hands and a bias toward incumbents winning future purchases is costing Miami-Dade millions because county officials find it hard to change vendors once they’re hooked on a platform, commissioners said last week.

As commissioners looked at an emergency contract for database management support, they pointed to the plethora of contracts that seem to lock in the county in perpetuity because one vendor alone is able to keep broad swaths of its technology operating. They discussed a task force to focus on breaking the cycle of lack of real competition for tech contracts.

“I’m seeing more and more where a lot of the procurement items as it relaters to IT and technology we are having issues with,” Commissioner Micky Steinberg said. “I think we need to start thinking prospectively as technology changes and different uses of technology are entered into the fabric of what we do.”

Citing products that only one vendor can handle, Commissioner Oliver Gilbert said of Microsoft and other legacy systems, “their business model is clearly to lock us in and make it so expensive for us to change that we essentially lost all of our deliberative authority, because they know that they can charge us, if it’s going to cost $20 million, they can start at $215 million even though there might be something better.”

Last month the administration took a no-bid Microsoft deal for three years for $57.3 million, up from the prior $38 million. With the renewal, the contract’s total allocation is $105.6 million through May 2029. Microsoft services are “serving as the backbone of operational systems throughout the departments and constitutional offices,” wrote Carladenise Edwards, county chief administrative officer.

On a committee agenda this week is another three-year deal to keep buying Microsoft support in a $6.4 million non-competitive designated purchase. “As the county continues transitioning to Microsoft’s cloud-based platforms, access to Unified Support Services remains essential to ensure seamless integration and performance,” wrote Mayor Daniella Levine Cava. “Competition for these services is not practicable, as Microsoft Corporation is the sole provider.”

“We need to be in short-term deals with agnostic technology, things that come in and out,” Mr. Gilbert said at the meeting. “Getting out of the system will save the county money long term – it just costs more initially. And so if we never bite the bullet, we trap us in the cycle of continuing to pay more and continuing to be trapped in legacy systems that might not be in our best interest.”

Entrapment is the nature of the technology sphere, said county purchasing head Namita Uppal. “Once you get invested in any system or legacy, you are at the mercy of those companies.”

“It’s very much engraved into the ecosystem that we have, an ecosystem that’s built over 30-plus years in technology,” Communications, Information and Technology Director Jorge Olazabal said of the contract under discussion. “It’s something that we can’t just do a lift and shift on.”

Two years ago the state legislature battled the issue, said Commissioner Vicki Lopez. It created a committee and discovered that “no one had ever looked at it completely, across the board, every single agency, every piece of software and hardware being purchased….. There may be a need to sit down and actively analyze all of this as a board.”

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