ABSTRACT:
Like many government agencies, the technology department at the City of Pittsburgh has had to deal with shrinking budgets and increased demands for state-of-the-art technology like cloud computing. With cloud computing, employee mailboxes would have greater capacity, emails would be stored and backed up offsite, and data would be easily retrieved for e-discovery purposes. The City issued a request for proposal (RFP) to solicit bids from industry providers. With the assistance of an academic decision-making expert, the City employed the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) methodology to select the most innovative and cost-effective solution. This government-academic partnership constitutes an excellent example of engaged scholarship and provided the City with an objective and transparent selection vendor process. Lessons learned and issues with respect to this collaboration and public group decision-making in the context of new technology will be discussed.
