Board approves expanded single‑vendor intelligence subscription after questions on waivers

The State Controlling Board approved an amendment for the Department of Public Safety to expand a subscription to a commercial intelligence product, but several board members urged the agency to pursue competitive procurement in future cycles.

Matthew Martin, chief financial officer for DPS, described the product as a unique package of curated intelligence briefings and said the department regards it as sole‑source because competing products do not offer the same comprehensive package. “This product is something that we at the department use…we have researched and found to be that it is a sole source,” Martin said.

Mark Porter, executive director of Ohio Homeland Security, told the board the vendor had been tested alongside eight others in 2019 and that the department initially subscribed at about $55,000 per year. Porter said the proposed expansion would increase access to nine enterprise feeds and additional source feeds, raising the cost to roughly $90,000–$94,000 for the next two years but “literally doubling our value of the information that we’re going to be getting.”

Representative de Villa expressed concern about the seven‑year gap since the product was last put out to bid and urged the department to bring the contract back for competitive procurement rather than repeatedly seeking waivers. “State law does need to be adhered to, and it would make sense to be to put this back…at an appropriate point again,” de Villa said.

After discussion and no objections, the board approved the amendment.

The amendment was presented as a renewal/expansion of an existing subscription and does not itself create a new procurement policy; board members requested that the department consider re‑soliciting competition in the future.