The Government of New Brunswick Province is planning to acquire a number of global positioning systems, which would go into its fleet of vehicles. They have sent out a request for proposals.
The New Brunswick government has put out a tender for global positioning systems to go in its fleet of vehicles
The government wants bidders who could supply a total of 4,500 GPS systems, which would track the location, speed, distance travelled, idling, emergency stops, aggressive acceleration and hours of operation of the vehicles. The government’s plan is to improve the efficiency of the vehicles. However, the Opposition Liberals are enquiring about the price of the GPS systems to be purchased.
Rick Doucet, who is a Liberal transportation critic, stated that the timing is not appropriate for such a project and further mentioned that the total cost of such a project would come to around $4 million for all the vehicles. He also questioned if a project of this size and value is more important than other projects for senior citizens or students. According to Doucet, many simpler ways were available for government supervisors to manage their transportation budgets. He also had a doubt about who would monitor the system.
Andy Hardy, a representative of over 2000 government trades people and laborers in CUPE Local 11-90, commented that workers do not require an electronic babysitter, which would be utilized as a disciplinary tool. If it is going to be used for penalizing an operator who has travelled more than what he should have then it was not agreeable. He revealed that devices, which could be added on to existing vehicle radios, are a cheaper proposition and could track more efficiently.
The tender would close on July 26th and the government plans on signing a contract for this project by 16th September. The government expects to install the systems in several hundreds of vehicles by the end of the year.