The US Educational Technology Purchasing Alliance announces the initial issuance of Request for Proposals (RFP) to create Master Service Agreements for all K-12 public and Private schools, Head Start organizations, and Public Libraries. The RFPs will be available to vendors on Friday, October 17, and will look to aggregate statewide school technology purchasing power while streamlining the federal E-Rate application process and ensuring that eligible entities are in compliance with state purchasing laws.

“USETPA contracts should help schools simplify the procurement process and get great pricing for technology goods and services thus allowing them to purchase with confidence” Landon Scism, USETPA Executive Director

The US Education Technology Purchasing Alliance (USETPA) is a North Carolina nonprofit purchasing group organized to aggregate demand for a wide range of technology equipment, services, and software with the objective of lowering technology prices for public and private K12 schools, public libraries, and Head Start programs and supplanting the often cumbersome local bidding process. North Carolina schools will spend approximately $1 Billion on technology in the next five years and the advantage gained by aggregating demand to increase purchasing power will be very important.

All LEAs, individual public and private schools, Head Starts, and public libraries may avail themselves of the products covered by the contracts obtained by the USETPA without conducting their own public bidding process as the USETPA is qualified as a NC “competitive bidding group purchasing program” under NC statutes. There is no cost to join the USETPA nor any obligation to use any of its contracts. The USETPA will issue a comprehensive set of Requests for Proposals (RFPs) on behalf of all schools in NC and will contract with successful bidders by the end of November, 2014. The bids and the resultant contracts will be posted on the ETPA’s website at www.usetpa.org.