The week at Toronto City Hall for October 21 to 25, featuring broken water meters, glossy plans for culture and the economy, dangerous dog numbers and more
"As a result, Aclara — the supplier of the faulty units — has been awarded an emergency sole-source contract worth about $5.6 million to cobble together a batch of replacement units." Oof, no doubt this puts the city in a challenging spot but geez, providing the company who has so many faulty units, with another 5+ million dollars feels...not ideal.
Yep -- it's unfortunately a pretty common story with government tech. Cost of switching to a new product is deemed too high or too time-intensive, so more money gets sunk into existing product even when existing product isn't very good. I'm hoping there's another shoe to drop here, and this initial emergency contract is just doing enough to buy some time while they figure out a better solution, but I've been disappointed before.
"As a result, Aclara — the supplier of the faulty units — has been awarded an emergency sole-source contract worth about $5.6 million to cobble together a batch of replacement units." Oof, no doubt this puts the city in a challenging spot but geez, providing the company who has so many faulty units, with another 5+ million dollars feels...not ideal.
Yep -- it's unfortunately a pretty common story with government tech. Cost of switching to a new product is deemed too high or too time-intensive, so more money gets sunk into existing product even when existing product isn't very good. I'm hoping there's another shoe to drop here, and this initial emergency contract is just doing enough to buy some time while they figure out a better solution, but I've been disappointed before.