Angela L. Martin · SLED Playbook

State and Local Contract Vehicles

Procurement paths

In public sector, the path to paper is part of the qualification. A deal with a champion, a budget and no vehicle is not a deal yet.

National and multi-state State Education and local NASPO ValuePoint OMNIA Partners GSA Cooperative Carahsoft Maryland COTS Maryland CATS+ DE and WV confirmed per engagement E-Rate E&I Cooperative VASCUPP The Quilt participating addendum
Vehicles stack from national to state to education and local, and naming the layer early is what keeps the engineer from scoping a proof of value that has no way to be bought.

This is the vehicle map I plan against, split into national and multi-state agreements, state-specific contracts, and the education cooperatives. Where a status says confirm, it is one I validate against the region's actual transaction history before planning on it.

Where I have done this

I run the SLED partner motion through Carahsoft at New Relic, where sourced ACR is up 130 percent and partner-sourced win rate up 212 percent, and where I closed the Maryland Benefits play through Maryland DoIT procurement.

National and multi-state

Vehicle What it covers How I use it
NASPO ValuePoint Multi-state cooperative agreements that participating states adopt through their own participating addenda The default first question on any statewide deal: is this state a participating entity, and for which category
OMNIA Partners National cooperative purchasing for state, local and education buyers Useful where an agency wants speed and has no open state contract for the category
GSA Cooperative Purchasing Lets eligible state and local entities buy certain IT and security products from GSA schedules Relevant on security and IT categories where the schedule already carries the product
Aggregators (Carahsoft) Public sector distribution, contract holding and partner enablement across many of the vehicles above Where most of my registered partner pipeline has historically been built and tracked

State-specific

Vehicle State Status
Maryland CATS+ Maryland In my working map; services-oriented statewide contract
Maryland COTS Maryland In my working map; commercial off-the-shelf products

Delaware and West Virginia state vehicles are confirmed per engagement rather than listed here.

Education

Vehicle Who buys on it Status
E-Rate K-12 districts and libraries, Category 1 connectivity and Category 2 internal connections In my working map; filing windows drive the K-12 calendar
E&I Cooperative Services Higher education In my working map
VASCUPP Virginia public higher education, widely referenced beyond it In my working map
The Quilt Research and education networks, consortium members In my working map; confirm per institution

How I use them

  1. The vehicle is a qualification field, not paperwork. No deal reaches a late stage without a named vehicle or a written date by which we will name one, and the engineer will not see a proof-of-value request from my team until that field is filled.
  2. I map the vehicle to the buyer, not to the product. The same platform sells through a state contract at one agency, a cooperative at a district, and a research consortium at a university.
  3. Partners carry the paper where they are stronger than we are. If a reseller holds the contract the customer already buys on, the fastest honest path is through that reseller.
  4. The vehicle map gets re-verified every quarter. Contracts lapse, categories change, and a stale vehicle map produces confident forecasts that cannot be invoiced.