Gotta love those contracts

Our contracts are in a state of disarray. It's not the fault of DDO. The Department has received more contracts and because of budget cuts, has to manage these contracts with less people. Thankfully, we requested Prolaw -- a contract database -- in our budget and it went through Council and was approved! Prolaw will allow DDO to track contracts much easier. The contract is loaded into the computer and Prolaw analyzes it -- it ascertains milestones, specific obligations, and so forth. It coordinates this information with Outlook. For example, when an employee comes into work, first thing on their agenda is to ensure such-and-such company paid their annual bill to the city. No more digging through stacks, upon stacks of paperwork trying to get the answer. The law department uses the same kind of system, and they love it.

Well, the question is what to do in the meantime. Prolaw will not be installed until mid-July. Even then, we have to wait for training and to input all of our contracts into the system. Thank goodness there is an intern to do such things. ;) At least, that is my goal before I go. I want to do as many contracts as I can -- by all means, there is no way I can do all of them. But anything I can do in regard to organizing contracts will help the City, I feel. I have completed one. It took me about two weeks (I have other projects I am working on as well). I put all of the information in an Excel document, and I think it is readily understandable.