March 2008 — News
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'Augmented' IT Supports Massive Infrastructure for Virginia District
Even though the work is primarily project-based, the district also turns to Dimension Data for long-term staffing. One highly technical person has been working in the district for 10 years. "He has a high-level Cisco certification--the [Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert]," said VanDenburg. "He has not only a lot of technical knowledge but also a lot of institutional knowledge.... If we had to hire a CCIE, I don't think we could. They wouldn't want to get an FCPS salary."
VanDenburg said that his group is currently using six outside people. "My Sun Solaris team is two people," he said. "For the work [we] need four people. I've had to hire two people to augment the two employees. We went and found what we needed from a contract. We've contracted them out on a 12-month basis."
The Price of Staff Augmentation
He acknowledges that the price of contractors is definitely heftier than hiring internally--possibly as much as 50 percent higher than paying salary and benefits for a comparable employee. According to a publicly available copy of the award issued by the district for network technical support, as an example, vendors are charging from $48.43 to $67.60 per hour for a network analyst 1 position and from $103.38 to $166.50 per hour for a senior systems architect. Discounts are given for long-term contracts.
"We're a school system, so we have a limited budget," said VanDenburg. "Our salaries are probably not as good as private industry. The only way to get that level of expertise is through staff augmentation. We may not have the positions in house that will meet their salary core requirements."
The department constantly monitors whether it would be less expensive to convert those "professional dollars," as VanDenburg calls them, into a professional position. "But that's not our call. That's something we have to work through HR on."
While it's not always possible to bring people into staff positions, said VanDenburg, it does happen. Senior network analyst Dean Ho joined the district as a permanent employee from the Dimension Data side. "We try to do that when we can, but when we can't, we go out and augment. That is more expensive."
Getting the Right Fit
Vendors currently contracted by the county for network-related work include: AAC Associates, CACI-CMS Information Systems, Dimension Data, EDS, Force 3, General Dynamic Information Technology, L-3 Titan Corp., and TranTech. Each has gone through a request for proposal (RFP) process, managed by the county's purchasing and supply management agency. The most recent RFP for network technology services was done in 2005, and it's coming up for renewal in 2008. The RFP includes a description of the general work to be done, as well as anticipated special projects.
