Adelup, AG's Office work on resolving RFP debate

by Ken Quintanilla

Guam - While it remains to be seen whether a procurement challenge will be resolved soon over the Government of Guam's point of sale system request for proposal, without resolution it may force the government's financial data system to go back to the dark ages.

"The government of Guam is in a quandary right now because they are currently without a properly functioning point of sale system, which is why they put this RFP out in the first place," said Data Management Resources chief operations officer Gina Taitano. DMR has been the only vendor providing the financial data services to the government for years and was the only company to respond to the point of sale RFP.

And while the Governor's Office noted the Attorney General's Office statements that GovGuam could simply go back to pen and paper in the journalizing of all transactions, such would shoot GovGuam back close to 30 years. "So they need a resolution or they'll be forced to go back to the dark ages of filing receipts manually and having to put it on the taxpayers to prove that they made tax payments," she explained. "Because when you go back to the manual process, there's absolutely no integration with systems."

The POS is what runs the government's accounting system along with a host of other functions like the posting of tax payments and tax refunds and even Rev & Tax's online services. "So it's basically the heart of the government's system. It holds and manages the data," she said.

DMR was the only company to respond to the POS system RFP. DMR's $1.8 million bid was rejected due to costs resulting in negotiations with DMR bringing down its bid by a half-million. However, the AG's Office did not like terms of the proposed settlement based on several allegations, including claims that DMR was responsible for the intentional disruption of government data services earlier this year along with issues over a fiber optic cable being installed and connected, giving DMR unrestricted and uncontrolled access to classified data.

Taitano, along with her husband, DMR chief executive officer Richard Taitano, refutes those claims and hope that not only the integrity of the company is cleared but that the procurement process is followed. "So that's why we want this be resolved quickly and hopefully - everyone will be happy with that resolution and of course it has to be within the legal parameters but we just want to get back to work," she said.

Meanwhile, Adelup deputy press secretary Phil Leon Guerrero would not comment further on the matter, saying the governor's legal counsel and the AG's Office are working together to resolve the matter. Both parties agree this is a critical procurement issue that needs to be resolved.

We should note that in terms of the high speed short haul fiber optic cable, according to documents filed with the OPA's office, that was actually authorized by former Department of Administration director Lou Perez in May 2009.

Meanwhile, the hearing on the DMR appeal is scheduled to continue on December 18.