NASPO Honors Innovative Procurement Practices, Elects Officers

NASPO Honors Innovative Procurement Practices, Elects Officers

The National Association of State Procurement Officials honored six innovative state procurement programs at its Annual Meeting in Mystic, Connecticut when it presented its annual Cronin Club awards. The awards are broken into two categories; Classic and Information Technology.

The 2005 Cronin Classic Award winners were: Gold Award; Commonwealth of Massachusetts for Envirocalc: Environmental Benefits and Energy Cost Savings Calculator for Purchasers, Silver Award; State of Michigan for MiDEAL Program: Michigan Delivering Extended Agreements Locally, and Bronze Award; State of New York, Aggregated IT Procurement Program.

The 2005 Cronin Information Technology Award winners were: Gold Award; State of Washington for WEBS: Washingtons Electronic Business Solution, Silver; State of Illinois Knowledge Management System, and Bronze Award; State of New York, Road Salt.

Since 1985, the Cronin Club Innovation Awards have recognized innovative state procurement programs and promoted the sharing of ideas between states. The Cronin Club is a committee of past presidents of the association and is named for the first NASPO President, George Cronin. More information on the awarded programs, as well as all of the 2005 nominees, is available on the NASPO homepage at http://www.naspo.org.

In other news, NASPO announced that Ellen Phillips, Deputy State Purchasing Agent for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, became the new president of NASPO, effective September 1, 2005. Phillips assumed leadership of the association at the end of the associations Annual Meeting in Mystic, Connecticut. Also chosen were the President-elect, Voight Shealy (SC) and the Finance Chair, Greg Smith (NV). John Adler (AZ), 2004-2005 President, became Past-President. In addition, three new Board members at large were selected: Chris Howe (KS), Mike Mangum (NC) and Kay Kishline (CO).

This is an exciting time to be president of NASPO, Phillips stated. My vision is that NASPO will continue to provide leadership and promote professionalism among the members through training that reinforces the procurement professions core values of ethics, integrity, knowledge, teamwork and open communication.

Ms. Phillips goals for this year include promoting innovation, data-driven benchmarking, strategic sourcing, stakeholder involvement, and technology. Most important, said Phillips, are reinforcing the leadership role that we play in establishing public procurement policy and best practices, and being proactive about emerging issues such as outsourcing/offshoring and efforts to privatize public procurement, an inherently governmental function.

Phillips has worked in the Commonwealth's central procurement office, the Operational Services Division (OSD) and its predecessor agencies for over 20 years. In her capacity as deputy, she works in conjunction with the State Purchasing Agent to establish procurement policy, rules and regulations that govern Massachusetts procurement.

In addition, Phillips manages OSDs administration and information technology units, which includes Comm-PASS, the states e-procurement system. She is also responsible for the Affirmative Market Program, Procurement Training and Quality Assurance, the Office of Vehicle Management, Federal/State Surplus Property, Purchase of Services, and Printing.

Phillips has previously served as OSD's Director of Administration, Director of Commodities, including Information Technology and Director, Management Information Systems. In addition, she played a major role in procurement reform in Massachusetts and was a recipient of the Manual Carballo Governor's Award for Excellence in Public Service.

Ellen Phillips has been affiliated with NASPO for over 14 years (6 years as a voting member).

The National Association of State Procurement Officials is a non-profit association dedicated to strengthening the procurement community through education, research, and communication. It is made up of the directors of the central purchasing offices in each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia and the territories of the United States. NASPO is an organization through which the member purchasing officials provide leadership in professional public purchasing, improve the quality of purchasing and procurement, exchange information and cooperate to attain greater efficiency and economy.