New York CIty Council Member Ben Kallos

Contracts

Introduction 1208-2016: Establishment of a centralized procurement database.

This bill would require the mayor to establish and maintain a public online database to contain certain information for every agency procurement that exceeds the small purchase limits. This information includes applicable requests for proposals or public notices, submitted responses, and details about the awarded contract (such as the name of the contractor, term of the contract, and dollar amount of the contract).

Introduction 365-2014: Civic Commons Act

Civic Commons Act, would encourage the collaborative software purchasing of free and open source software among agencies, cities and states to pool resources, avoid duplicated effort, create portable expertise, grow jobs, and reduce costs. A Civic Commons FOSS portal would be created to facilitate collaborative software purchasing and host the collaborative FOSS source code as well as FOSS projects identified as useful for government use. Civic Commons is currently a project of Code for America, a not-for-profit hosted at Commons.CodeForAmerica.org with more information available at wiki.CivicCommons.org.

Introduction 366-2014: Free and Open Source Software Act

Free and Open Source Software Act (FOSSA), would minimize city contracts for proprietary software in favor of free and open source software (FOSS) that can be shared between government agencies and bodies instead of propriety programs that currently require the city and other municipalities, including the state, to pay private vendors over and over again for the same code. FOSS provides the city with power over the code and the freedom to study, modify, upgrade, improve, customize, maintain and redistribute within agencies and to other cities or states. Free software means code that is free from proprietary constraints, not free of charge.