- September 30, 2015
- Posted by: James
- Category: News
LEXINGTON, Ky. (September 30, 2015) – The National Association of State Procurement Officials (NASPO) honored three innovative state procurement programs with the George Cronin Award for Procurement Excellence at its Annual Conference during the Cronin Club Luncheon held September 29th in Norfolk, Virginia. Nominations were scored based on the criteria of innovation and initiative, transferability, service improvement, and demonstrable cost reduction. Submissions from Tennessee, Minnesota, and New York received top honors this year.
This year Tennessee comes home with the Gold Cronin Award. After winning the Bronze Award last year, Tennessee had their eye on the prize this year. Their nomination Tourist Development – Marketing and Advertising saw favor with the judges as the highest scoring nomination. Tennessee’s Central Procurement Office developed a highly innovative four-tier procurement process to select a contract for traditional, website, and online digital marketing and advertising for tourist development. As a result of increased marketing and advertising through this contract, coupled with Tennessee Tourism Committee activities, Tennessee estimates $1 billion in increased tourism spending from 2013 to 2014.
Minnesota took home the honor of Silver Cronin Award winner with their submission Minnesota’s MMCAP Focus Data Analytics System. The Minnesota Multistate Contracting Alliance for Pharmacy (MMCAP) is a 48 state participating state consortium that spends nearly two billion dollars on pharmaceutical and other related healthcare. Due to the abundance of products being purchased, reporting consolidated information required hours of staff time spent on creating custom reports. With the introductions of MMCAP’s new cloud-based focus data analytics system, the reporting has opened up new opportunities for data-driven procurement decision making as well as drive efficiencies and savings in what is purchased through their contracts.
The Bronze Cronin Award was presented to New York for their nomination New York State Vehicle Marketplace. Their new vehicle marketplace allows the contract user to create a mini-bid in an online portal for exactly what is needed. The marketplace not only provides a minimum base discount on vehicles but has also created enhanced competition between dealers resulting in additional cost savings to the state. The new contract offers unprecedented choice, flexibility, convenience and pricing competition to its contract users.
NASPO also recognized two state nominations as finalists. These finalists were the State of Ohio for their submission Ohio Waste Management Program and the State of Delaware with their submission Maximizing Fleet Resources and Streamlining Operations.
The George Cronin Award for Procurement Excellence is recognized as a premier achievement for innovative public procurement and pays homage to a founder and the first president of NASPO, George J. Cronin. Since 1985, the Cronin Awards have recognized ground-breaking state procurement programs and promoted the sharing of ideas between states.