The Public Doesn't Owe Government the Benefit of the Doubt. We Have to Earn It

After more than 22 years working for New York City government, I've learned that the hardest questions about public spending aren't always the ones auditors, oversight agencies, or reporters ask.

Sometimes they're the questions government employees should have asked themselves before deciding.

Why are we spending this money?

Why are we using this contractor?

Why does something that appears relatively simple take six months to procure?

Why are we maintaining technology that should have been replaced years ago?

And perhaps most importantly, could we explain our decision to an ordinary taxpayer without relying on 20 pages of procurement rules, technical specifications, and bureaucratic terminology?

As Director of IT Procurement and Budget at the New York City Department of Correction, I oversee an operation responsible for approximately 200 to 300 procurements annually, involving technology contracts, software licensing, infrastructure, telecommunications, and specialized professional services.

Our work supports an agency that operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

I don't work in public relations. I've never been a press secretary.

But I've come to believe that some of the most important work in government communications happens long before a reporter asks a question.

It happens when we decide how to spend public money, evaluate competing proposals, negotiate contracts, and document why we made the decisions we did.

I Try to Imagine the Headline Before We Make the Decision

Consider a headline that might appear in a newspaper:

City spends $6 million renewing contract with longtime technology vendor.

On its face, that sounds like an agency handing millions of dollars to a familiar company.

But the underlying circumstances might be considerably more complicated.

Perhaps the technology supports critical operations in correctional facilities. Perhaps changing vendors would require replacing thousands of devices, migrating sensitive information, retraining personnel, and risking service interruptions.

Perhaps the agency has evaluated alternatives and determined that the existing arrangement remains the most economical.

Or perhaps nobody has seriously evaluated the alternatives in years.

Those are very different situations.

In my role, I regularly examine contracts involving proprietary technology, incumbent support providers, and specialized systems where changing vendors isn't as simple as buying a different brand of office supplies.

Sometimes maintaining the incumbent is justified.

Sometimes it isn't.

My responsibility is to establish which is true.

I want to know whether we tested the market, challenged pricing, considered alternative procurement vehicles, and distinguished genuinely proprietary services from work that other qualified vendors could perform.

If we're going to spend millions of dollars, we should be prepared to explain why.

The best way to defend a procurement decision isn't to prepare a clever explanation afterward. It's to make a defensible decision in the first place.

My Experience Has Taught Me That Competition Is About More Than Price

I have spent much of my career trying to increase competition and improve the value government receives for its expenditures.

That doesn't mean automatically selecting the lowest bid.

It means making sure we have a legitimate basis for our choices.

For example, when evaluating technology procurements, I frequently question whether requirements are unnecessarily restrictive.

Does a specification describe the functionality we actually need, or does it effectively describe one manufacturer's product?

Could another vendor provide an equivalent solution?

Are we requiring something because it is operationally necessary, or because we've always purchased it that way?

Can an existing contract provide better pricing?

Should we negotiate more aggressively with the incumbent?

I have also pushed back when vendors propose pricing that doesn't appear reasonable, even when the proposed work is important.

In one recent maintenance procurement, we challenged an incumbent vendor's pricing after comparing it with another provider's proposal. The vendor agreed to reduce its price.

That may not generate a headline.

But those are precisely the kinds of decisions that demonstrate stewardship of taxpayer money.

Competition doesn't necessarily mean changing vendors. It means creating conditions where vendors know their pricing and performance will be scrutinized.

And when competition genuinely isn't feasible, the government should be able to document why.

Transparency Should Begin Before Someone Files a FOIL Request

New York's Freedom of Information Law provides an important mechanism for public access to government records.

But I don't believe the public should always need to submit a formal records request to understand the basic rationale for a major government expenditure.

Government should explain its decisions proactively.

For a substantial procurement, that explanation might include the operational need, the alternatives considered, the estimated total cost, the basis for selecting the vendor, and the expected public benefit.

Not every detail can be disclosed. Security-sensitive information, protected personal data, procurement integrity, and other legal restrictions matter.

Working in a correctional environment makes those considerations particularly important.

But confidentiality shouldn't become a blanket justification for avoiding reasonable questions.

There is a difference between protecting information that legitimately needs protection and making government unnecessarily difficult to understand.

I believe we should recognize that distinction.

I Learned Early That Access to Government Shouldn't Depend on Knowing the Right People

Earlier in my City career, I worked in the Brooklyn Borough President's Office, where I helped manage discretionary capital funding for nonprofit organizations.

That experience helped shape my understanding of fairness and public accountability.

I questioned whether funding opportunities were sufficiently visible to organizations that weren't already familiar with government processes.

I believed public funding opportunities should be advertised more broadly, allowing more nonprofits to submit proposals and demonstrate their needs.

A wider pool of applicants could also improve the quality of the projects under consideration.

I wanted decisions to be grounded in identifiable public benefits.

Could a relatively modest capital allocation unlock matching funding?

Would it address a pressing community need?

Would it meaningfully improve an organization's ability to serve residents?

Those are better questions than simply asking which organization approached government first.

And they produce decisions that are easier to explain publicly.

If a reporter asks why one nonprofit received funding and another didn't, government should have a substantive answer.

The same principle applies to technology procurement, capital planning and virtually every other area of public administration.

A fair process doesn't guarantee that everyone will agree with the outcome. But it gives the outcome legitimacy.

Sometimes the Most Valuable Question Is the One Nobody Wants to Hear

After working in an organization for many years, it's easy to get used to how things operate.

Institutional knowledge is valuable.

Institutional complacency isn't.

I've encountered legacy technology environments where the question isn't simply whether a system still functions.

It's whether maintaining it makes financial and operational sense.

An agency may be paying for obsolete software, specialized technicians who are increasingly hard to replace, or infrastructure that cannot readily support modern applications.

Someone eventually needs to ask:

Why are we still doing this?

What would replacement cost?

How much are we spending annually to preserve the existing arrangement?

What risks are we accepting by doing nothing?

Would modernization produce long-term savings?

In my work, these questions aren't theoretical.

They arise in procurement planning, contract renewals, capital budget requests, and technology modernization initiatives.

Sometimes the analysis supports continuing the existing approach.

Other times, it reveals that we've been paying to postpone a decision that will eventually cost more.

A reporter asking why government still uses outdated technology may not understand every technical dependency.

But the underlying question is entirely legitimate.

And we should already be asking it internally.

Public Accountability Also Requires Admitting When Something Isn't Working

Government is not immune to mistakes.

Contracts take longer than expected.

Projects encounter technical problems.

Vendors fail to meet expectations.

Budgets prove insufficient.

An initiative that appeared sensible during planning may become less attractive as circumstances change.

I don't think pretending those problems don't exist strengthens public confidence.

I prefer to identify problems early, understand their consequences, and develop a corrective plan.

If a contract is delayed, what caused the delay?

If a vendor isn't performing, what contractual remedies are available?

If a project exceeds its budget, what changed?

If a technology solution no longer meets operational requirements, what alternatives exist?

Those are management questions first.

They become communications questions when the agency must explain what happened.

There are legitimate reasons to coordinate public statements carefully, particularly when legal proceedings, security, or personnel matters are involved.

But accuracy should always take precedence over the desire to make a problem disappear.

I'd rather explain a problem and the steps being taken to address it than offer an overly confident statement that later proves incorrect.

The Public Deserves Plain English, Not a Procurement Dictionary

One challenge of working in government for decades is becoming fluent in terminology that means little to the public.

We discuss capital eligibility, expense funding, contract registration, sole-source justifications, procurement vehicles, fiscal-year commitments, and operational dependencies.

These distinctions matter.

But imagine explaining to a taxpayer that a project was delayed because its capital funding wasn't available for a particular expense component and the necessary procurement vehicle wasn't ready.

That may be technically accurate.

It may also not explain much.

A better explanation would identify what the agency was trying to purchase, why it mattered, what prevented the purchase, and what is being done to resolve the issue.

I believe government managers should be able to translate complex administrative decisions into language residents can understand.

That doesn't require oversimplifying the facts.

It requires understanding them well enough to explain them clearly.

I Want Government to Be Judged by Outcomes, Not Just Compliance

I have graduate degrees in public administration, business administration, and public health, including a Doctor of Public Health.

That academic background, combined with more than two decades of government experience, has reinforced my belief that public administration should be evaluated through both compliance and outcomes.

Did we follow the law?

Did we conduct the procurement properly?

Did we document the expenditure?

Those are essential questions.

But I also want to know:

Did we solve the problem?

Did we obtain good value?

Did we improve service delivery?

Did we reduce long-term costs?

Did we leave the organization in a better position than we found it?

An agency can comply with every procedural requirement and still make a poor financial decision.

Conversely, a promising operational idea doesn't excuse ignoring procurement rules or accountability requirements.

Good government requires both.

That is also how I think about public communication.

I don't want an agency to explain only that it followed the required process.

I want it to explain what the public received in return.

Public Trust Is Built Through Thousands of Decisions Nobody Sees

Most of the work that happens in government never receives media attention.

Nobody writes a headline because a contract manager identified an unnecessary expense.

Nobody holds a press conference because a procurement analyst negotiated a better renewal price.

Nobody issues a public statement because a budget employee recognized that an anticipated expenditure could be avoided.

But those decisions matter.

They accumulate.

Over time, they determine whether government uses its resources responsibly.

I've spent much of my professional life working on decisions that most residents will never hear about.

And that's fine.

Public service doesn't need to be visible to be valuable.

But it does need accountability.

After more than 22 years in New York City government, I believe the most effective public-sector communications strategy begins with a simple management philosophy:

Make decisions you can defend.

Document the reasoning.

Challenge assumptions.

Welcome legitimate scrutiny.

Acknowledge mistakes.

Explain complicated issues in plain English.

And remember that the money we're spending belongs to the public.

The public doesn't owe government the benefit of the doubt.

We have to earn it—not through better talking points, but through better decisions.