In a groundbreaking academic study coordinated by the National Association of State Procurement Officials (NASPO), private and public supply chain professors from across the United States conducted a nationwide survey of states’ responses to the pandemic. The study was based on over 100 hours of interviews conducted by the academic research team (Professors Robert Handfield (North Carolina State University), Zhaohui Wu (Oregon State University), Andrea Patrucco (Florida International University), Christopher Yukins (George Washington University) and Thomas Kull (Arizona State University)) with many states’ procurement staff, suppliers, and other state officials. Key takeaways from the study:
Assessing state procurement systems through a maturity model. Different states responded very differently to the pandemic, based in part on their organizational structures and preparations for the disaster. To help states better prepare, the researchers developed a “maturity model” to assess state procurement systems, in preparation for future catastrophes.
Courage and professionalism in the face of catastrophe. The researchers’ interviews with state procurement officials and suppliers “corroborate observations made in much of the disaster science research: disasters often bring out the best in us, and people rise to the occasion.” The study noted “how private citizens collaborated with entrepreneurial state employees to identify innovative and little-known PPE suppliers and often established innovative solutions to seemingly hopeless situations where PPE could not be found. Purchasing managers, staff members, and CPOs [Chief Procurement Officers] emerged as heroes. Our interviews revealed the pride and renewed sense of professional identity . . . . We observed a growing sense of camaraderie as people faced a common crisis.”
Centralization of the state procurement function was a key factor in success. The study’s results suggested “that increased centralized governance of state procurement led to a more effective response in tackling large-scale supply chain disruptions.” Centralized procurement “enabled increased coordination, improved leveraging of the volume of the state’s purchasing power, and provided for more efficient application of contracting expertise to a difficult market situation.” A centralized approach, the study found “also led to better coordination among disaster relief entities, PPE suppliers and hospitals, counties, and agencies requiring PPE to operate.”
Constitutional issues in federal-state confrontations over critical supplies. In principle, the federal government should have helped better coordinate states’ responses to the pandemic. In practice, however, during the early stages of the pandemic the federal government was repeatedly accused of abusing its powers under the Defense Production Act to seize and redirect emergency supplies that had been purchased by individual states — although, under the U.S. federalist system of government, the states bear first responsibility for the health and welfare of their citizens, constitutionally, practically, and politically. The study argued that “[s]erious consideration should be given to whether the Defense Production Act should be amended to recognize the deference owed by the federal government to the states under the Constitution, much as many other federal laws (such as those governing federal grants, use of National Guard troops, etc.) recognize and defer to the sovereign authority of the states.”
