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Montana Gov. Schweitzer, HHS director say they can’t weigh where jobs will be located in awarding contracts

State officials are forbidden by law from considering whether tax-funded work will be done by foreign employees overseas when they divvy out state contracts, Gov. Brian Schweitzer said Wednesday.

His remarks come amid a flap over a pending state contract to build software for the state’s Department of Public Health and Human Services. The top-scoring firm is Deloitte, a global services company that intends to ship some of the Montana work to employees in other countries. Another company, Northrop Grumman, scored below Deloitte but had proposed doing the work for about $6 million less and with only Montana workers.

Northrop Grumman scored the lowest of the four companies evaluated in the final analysis. Deloitte scored the highest; however, all four received similar scores. Deloitte was only 5 percent higher than Northrop Grumman, according to preliminary state information.

By JENNIFER McKEE Missoulian State Bureau

Full Story: http://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/article_1a71a458-c437-11de-8252-001cc4c002e0.html

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Questions raised: Montana spending nearly $6M extra to send software development work overseas http://matr.net/article-36538.html

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Consider Montana workers: Northrop Grumman would keep large contract in state

When the state of Montana contracts with private companies to get state work done, one would hope they would give preference to Montana firms that employ Montana workers, especially if those firms can do the same work for less money.

But, of course, one can’t always be sure. And right now, Montana is in one of those unsure situations when it isn’t clear state officials will do the right thing.

The state has been collecting bids from different companies to develop software that would be used to manage the state’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families programs, both administered by the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services.

Missoulian editorial

Full Story: http://missoulian.com/news/opinion/editorial/article_9560d074-c493-11de-8943-001cc4c002e0.html

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