A team of students from New York Law School have teamed up with the Stupski Foundation to launch a new project initiative called Contract Commons. A description of the Contract Commons can be found at http://dotank.nyls.edu/ContractCommons.html. An alternative description of the project follows:
Background
School Information Systems, technology systems, services and support of all kinds are purchased in large volumes in the K-12 public education system. Many purchases are contracted using vendor provided models which can have a detrimental impact on vendor-client relations, quality of support and service, and product value. School districts often accept contract terms in their entirety, and become locked into contract models that are not sophisticated enough to account for technology issues. The districts often lack proper legal representation which can result in the formation of invalidated agreements that can have harsh legal ramifications. The contracts often make it difficult for schools to modify their systems, switch vendors or seek improvements. As a result of the disparity of bargaining positions between vendors and clients, there is a detrimental impact on the provision and sustainability of these systems and, in turn, on the public educational system as a whole. A need has surfaced to deliver a tool that enables a new form of interaction between vendors and school districts in an effort to provide a healthier balance between vendor and client needs and to equalize the intellectual and legal footing for equal bargaining power.
Project Purpose
The Contract Commons Initiative seeks to improve public school education by providing contract agreement tools to public educational clients to enable them to engage with vendors and service providers at a higher level of quality and delivery. Ultimately, school districts will obtain more leverage in contract negotiation processes by using independent contracts designed to support the client’s need as much as the vendor.
Design Goals and Impact on Educational Industry
The Contract Commons Initiative is premised on an open source community where contracts can be created, information about contract contents can be learned, and users can unite their ideas and experiences in an open dialogue with one another. The community will consist of a pool of “best of breed” contracts and a library of contract clauses that can be managed in an open source manner to produce executable contracts. The language and strategies of the contracts will be modifiable through open source deliberation allowing the contract to evolve so that appropriate versioning can occur for relevant domains. Contract Commons will serve as an educational tool that better informs school administrators, vendors, attorneys, technology users, policymakers and consultants, about contents of contracts, tactics for negotiating contracts, and the correlation between legal and business terms and considerations. The content embedded within the tool will be annotated in such a way that presents users with clear options and preferred decision-making skills for different circumstances of contract formation. In addition, Contract Commons will provide school districts and public educational groups with a clearinghouse of vendor information. In return, vendors will be able to obtain a clearer statement of client needs in a more efficient manner. As a result, executable contracts will be created in a more productive fashion while both parties negotiating the contract will be educated along the path to implementation. At the end of the contract formation and execution process, Contract Commons will enable clients to participate in a vendor rating system to help identify preferred vendors.
Besides building an educational resource, Contract Commons will be a community that encourages debate, discussion and negotiations, and seeks to induce dialogue amongst its users. Contract Commons will act as a negotiating tool for vendor-to-client communications allowing users to track modifications and articulate needs. Contract Commons can also serve as a means to engage collaboration and interaction between vendor-to-vendor as well as client-to-client communications. The success of this project will stem from the ability to connect users in a way that they are active contributors to the contract community.
In due course, the Contract Commons initiative will have a profound impact on public education and the best interests of all children in the public school system will be advanced to a great degree. Once enrolled in the Contract Commons system, school districts will partake in more informed decision-making and consequently, a prosperous relationship between vendors and school districts will develop.
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