In the state environment, the contract manager has a very specific role and does not always know the business of the program that is looking to outsource - they know how to monitor the contract, regardless of what is stated within that contract. The project manager is usually included from IT for any development projects, and while that individual becomes very familiar with the program's business, there are still very often items that the program staff are the most familiar with, especially since our project managers are very often juggling several projects at one time. This provides another set of individuals (Subject Matter Experts or SMEs) that can be relied on when you need to setup your evaluation criteria. These are the staff that know the program inside and out and are very often the end user as well. They are typically the ones that receive any of the "services" from the contract - customer support, overall system downtime, etc and are the ones that really drive what gets included in the RFP regarding these type features.
1. Class, the level of service provided can vary between sellers which is the exact reason to define evaluation criteria. However how can you ensure that the evaluation criteria are objective rather than purely subjective?