The Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR) wants more work.

That's a surprising sentiment as state agencies brace themselves for a severe global recession. Government, like all sectors of the U.S. economy, will be expected to do more work with fewer workers during this economic uncertainty. Some agencies will undoubtedly have to forgo hiring full-time employees for new IT projects.

The DIR has a readymade alternative: its retooled IT Staffing Services program. The department's program offers competitively awarded contracts for temporary technology staff -from software testers to programmers - at wages capped at a maximum hourly rate.

Sherri Parks, the director of the DIR's Contracting and Procurement Services Division, said she thinks Texas will likely use the staffing services program more frequently during the economic downturn to control costs. It provides a cost-effective option, Parks said, especially if the state freezes hiring because of budget shortfalls.

And a bad economy means that more-qualified workers will be available. "When folks lose their jobs, this becomes a more viable alternative; vendors are able to attract a higher level of expertise for our agencies to take advantage of," Parks said.

Streamlining Saves Money
In fiscal 2006, the DIR revamped its staffing services contracts as part of a larger cooperative program for information and communications technology contracts. The DIR knew internally that its workflow processes were too cumbersome, inflexible and costly to meet the needs of the state agencies and municipal governments that use them - like the Health and Human Services Commission, the Employee Retirement System, the Department of Transportation and the city of San Antonio.

The agencies and customers that used the old contracting program had to sign an interagency contract with the DIR. When they wanted to select a worker, they'd send their requirements to the DIR, which would send out a solicitation, and then staffing services vendors would send resumés back to the DIR - those steps of the process are mostly unchanged in today's system. But other requirements have since been streamlined to eliminate unnecessary paperwork: No. 1, the DIR would also do a full contract amendment with each vendor every time a worker was hired; No. 2, the vendors would invoice the DIR; and No. 3, the DIR would bill the end-user customer. An interagency contract with the customer is no longer needed.

"It was very administratively burdensome," Parks said. "It required us doing the billing, having a contract with the customer and doing an amendment every time we hired a worker."

Furthermore, it could take at least a month from the intent to hire to actually hiring a temporary IT staffer. "It was nearly impossible with the prior process to get someone onboard in a matter of days," said Cindy Reed, the DIR deputy executive director of operations and statewide technology sourcing. Now a CIO can complete a temporary hire in as soon as one week.

Besides simplifying the bureaucratic hurdles, the DIR made other changes to help its customer agencies. The department consolidated the job descriptions for these temporary IT employees to 15 categories - there were 51 prior to 2006.

Parks said the DIR modified its job titles to fit the state auditor's job titles, which were already familiar to contract users. "It really wasn't difficult, and it made it better for our customers because they already understand the state auditor office job titles and descriptions, so it falls in line with the state job classifications."

The paring of job categories allowed the DIR to go a step further and enact a "not-to-exceed cap" on the hourly wages of temporary IT staff hired under these template contracts. The most expensive job category makes no more than $125 per hour, though before, the contracts could balloon much higher. "For instance, you might have a