In the interest of promoting collaboration between UD and State of Delaware Agencies, we’ve started discussing ways to improve our relationship with state partners, the UD Research Office, and UD research stakeholders. In particular we hoped to improve our outcomes on things like securing bids, grants, internships, and placement of graduates. There is a natural benefit to the major state university (UD) and state government collaborating more closely.
After a few emails were exchanged, we picked some of the “low-hanging fruit”:
- Delaware’s procurement portal is the landing page for all things bid, contact, grant, etc.: https://mymarketplace.delaware.gov/. There should be section about subscribing to an email list for RFPs there. Notifications may have been broken from this email list, so it’s worthwhile re-subscribing if notifications are not being received.
- Opportunities with the Department of Technologies & Information are listed here: https://dti.delaware.gov/information/vendors.shtml
- To be added to the “technical staffing and services contract” we (UD GIS or the Research Office) or UD units will need to respond to an RFP for being added to that contact, the next time it goes out for bid (2016?). Not being on the contract does not preclude us from responding to RFPs when they go out.
Here are ongoing questions/comments which I put to state agencies, the UD Research Office, and UD research stakeholders. Answers will be posted here or through private channels if they would only be relevant for a particular unit.
State agencies
- To what extent are state agencies seeing less cooperation from UD on geospatial matters?
- Are there geospatial fields in which the state agencies do not feel like they have a partner at UD?
- How can we expand geospatial internship opportunities? In what areas can we improve the value of our interns (e.g., competencies, reliability, continuity, etc.)?
- Are there challenges that make UD less competitive on geospatial projects?
- What competencies could be improved with UD graduates who go on to State employment in geospatial areas?
Research office
- Are there opportunities for UD to collaborate with the state on geospatial projects as an internal organization? State Procurement was identified as a partner in that conversation.
- Some UD stakeholders feel that there may be room to improve grant administration and grant project management know-how within UD organizations.
- One UD stakeholder mentioned that there is considerable difficulty in working with incompatible funding concepts between the state and UD.
… and of the questions that I will put to the UD GIS community via the resources strategy meeting, these were the most germane to this discussion:
- Do you have a geospatial repository resource? If so, what is it? If not, is a lack of a geospatial repository affecting your ability to preserve and promote your work or to win competitive funding?
- To what extent have funding changes, both internal and external, affected geospatial matters with the state?