NASPO Pulse

From Freeways to Fire Retardant: California's Procurement Evolution

• National Association of State Procurement Officials

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What happens when a state with the world's fourth-largest economy revolutionizes how it buys everything from office supplies to life-saving fire retardant? Angela Shell, California's Chief Procurement Officer, takes us behind the scenes of procurement modernization in the Golden State.

Through data transparency initiatives, California has transformed how government agencies make purchasing decisions. Their enterprise procurement system captures every state purchase—revealing everything from multi-million dollar contracts to that time someone accidentally ordered "a million packages of ketchup." This wealth of information drives smarter buying decisions and allows unprecedented public visibility into government spending through dashboards anyone can access.

Whether you're a government buyer, supplier, or simply curious about how your tax dollars are spent, this conversation offers fascinating insights into procurement's evolution and its critical role in public service. Subscribe to NASPO's Pulse for more conversations at the forefront of government innovation.


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Julia McIlroy:

Hi everyone and welcome to NASPO's Pulse, the podcast that focuses on current topics in public procurement. I'm your host, Julia McIlroy. Today's guest is Angela Shell. Angela is the Chief Procurement Officer at the Department of General Services for the State of California. We'll be discussing procurement modernization. Hi, Angela, Welcome to Pulse. Good morning, I'm so happy you're here. I'd love to start with your background and what led you to public procurement.

Angela Shell:

Well, I have almost 31 years in state service with the state of California and I started my journey right out of college and while I was completing junior college and then my bachelor's degree. And I come from a long line of government workers my grandfather was a government worker, my mother government worker and then I have in-laws that are government workers. So when I was very young and wasn't sure what I wanted to do in life, it was a great opportunity for me to try out state service and, like most people, I really fell into procurement. I did not start out thinking I wanted to be a procurement official for the state of California although I will say that my very own mother was a procurement official for the federal government so but you know, like most kids, it was like what's that? So I kind of fell into it.

Angela Shell:

When I joined the Department of Transportation after a few years of state service and I really started kind of at the back end. I started in contract administration in our construction division and I was looking at things like prevailing wages, small business enforcement, equal employment opportunity, all the things that go into federal construction contracts, and I worked my way sort of backwards up to the procurement chief at the Department of Transportation. I spent 19 years there, and then, about seven and a half years ago, I decided to take on this role as the chief procurement officer for the state of California, and it has been quite a journey.

Julia McIlroy:

Angela, what would you say are the differences between your current position as CPO and being in the Department of Transportation?

Angela Shell:

The Department of Transportation was very sort of program and department specific.

Angela Shell:

So you know when you work in a department you are fulfilling, you know, procurements that allow that state department to achieve its mission, its vision, its goals, things like that.

Angela Shell:

And so the Department of Transportation is the second largest department in California, and so there was a lot of opportunity to have varying types of procurements. But really what led me to this role as the chief procurement officer was really that next level of being able to influence the policies, the practices. You know the types of things that I was required to enforce when I was at the Department of Transportation, and so I think this gave me that next level up, to really have an opportunity to influence what can benefit all state departments and look at challenges and look at things that could help not just the Department of Transportation, because I now delegate purchasing authority to them, but all state departments that have so many different types of missions and things that they need to get done through procurement. And so I saw this as a really great opportunity to go to that next level and use what I experienced at the Department of Transportation to help other state departments.

Julia McIlroy:

Well, there's certainly a lot of roadway in the Golden State, which you and I are both from, and I have a very pleasant childhood memory when I grew up in Orange County when the 91 freeway was having a ribbon cutting and our mother got us out of bed in our PJs into the station wagon and let my brother drive through that new section of the freeway. So it was a lot of fun. Could you imagine a brand new freeway? Was that exciting? But it was.

Angela Shell:

Yes, yes, it can be. I actually hosted a delegation from another country while at Caltrans and we walked a brand new section of highway as it was being constructed. It wasn't fully constructed, but I was able to walk it with them and it's a highway that I drive, you know, a few times a week. So I completely understand that, and it is a different perspective when you get to sort of be on the ground and seeing the result of really all of that is contracting and procurement. That gets us there.

Julia McIlroy:

And that's really the fun part of procurement right Is seeing these projects all the way to fruition and knowing how it's impacting the common good. So I know we're both purchasing nerds and get a lot of joy out of these different procurements. So how have digital tools changed the way your team approaches things like procurement planning, contract management and supplier relations?

Angela Shell:

So in California, we, you know, obviously we're a very large state and we have a enterprise system for procurement, budget and accounting it's what we call our fiscal system and that has been a huge modernization of really those three things that you know, those types of processes in the state of California. But what that did? We rolled it out back in 2015,. Actually, it had been in the planning stages 10 years prior to that. And that system has a requirement in it that all state departments have to post their purchases. There's really no exemptions If you buy something, whether it's a service or a good, it has to be posted in that system. And so what that really does is give us a wealth of data. So we get to see what departments are buying, what frequency they're buying it with, what's the cost, what are the vendors that they're typically using, and we roll that information up to dashboards that the public can see, that our state buyers can see. But really, what that does for us here at the Central Procurement Office is it allows us to look at current contract needs, future contract needs and it's using our own data to be able to say over the last five years, we've seen an increase in this amount of individual contracts by state departments for this good or service, and that's an indicator to us. This makes sense for a centralized procurement, what we call in California leveraged procurements. So it makes sense for us to put an agreement in place that makes it easier for state departments to buy this good or service so that they're not individually doing it on their own and perhaps not getting the best pricing or the best value out of the contract.

Angela Shell:

And so that's been a huge opportunity for us to really get insight. It also gives us insight into what people are buying that maybe they shouldn't be buying. Or if there's mistakes in things like, you know, someone bought you know a million packages of ketchup Okay, was that really correct? Or somebody put a purchase into the system for well, we've encumbered funds, but it's for a large construction contract that was really contracted out. So it really gives us the opportunity to see what's happening, correct things in real time and have transparency, both for our state departments and the general public in the state, about what's happening in procurement.

Angela Shell:

And then for the vendor pool. It really gives us an opportunity to see who we're using. You know, look to that vendor pool to be able to say, hey, how are things going on, these state contracts? You know it gives us an opportunity to say you know what are the an opportunity to say you know what are the trends in this industry. You know what are the different ideas on how the industry operates, such as things like information technology. Right, the way we buy information technology today is very different than the way we bought it, probably even you know, five, 10 years ago, because the industry is changing. So all of that data really gives us insight that we didn't have.

Julia McIlroy:

So two questions. One did someone actually buy a million packets of ketchup? They did, I'm sure there was an amazing reason why. And then the second is so the public has the opportunity to log into this dashboard, correct?

Angela Shell:

Yes, it doesn't even require a login. It's just on our public facing website and it's a link that you click on and you can sort through it by individual department, by specific buy, by category of buy. It's a wealth of information and it's all pulled from our fiscal system. What's been entered in.

Julia McIlroy:

That's great. So I was approached one time when I was at the University of Idaho by a beekeeper who wanted to sell honey to the university. So this person, if they were in California, would be able to go into the system and see who you're buying honey from, how much, how frequent. That's correct. So that information is really invaluable for central procurement, for the agencies, for suppliers, for the public. So I just, yeah, it's great, it gives you an opportunity to look at consolidation where that can happen.

Julia McIlroy:

And we had again something similar at the university where we have lots of labs, like all universities do, and different researchers who are buying compressed gases, and each lab might have spent like, say, $1,000 per year, but we were finding that we were spending about $400,000 collectively on these compressed gases without a contract in place. So it was an opportunity to say, yeah, there's lots of individual procurements that are happening, but in the collective it's quite a large amount. So really an opportunity to look at consolidating and having some sort of contract in place. And so it sounds like you've done something similar.

Angela Shell:

Yes, that is precisely what we use that data for, right. We regularly look through it and also, as departments come in and request, hey, I'd like to have a contract for this right, while that individual department may want that, we really want to look at, you know, should we just do a single department type contract, or what does our data show us across the state about who else might use this contract? And that gives us an opportunity to reach out to those departments and say, hey, would you be interested in a uniform contract, right? Or, to your point, compressed gases, which we do have contracts for those right. So who's interested? You know, going forward, and that's just another level of evaluation that we do.

Julia McIlroy:

So what role does cross agency partnerships or external collaborations play in modernization efforts?

Angela Shell:

Well, in my mind they play a huge role, I think. You know, frankly, I don't think you can do modernization efforts without those stakeholder partnerships and that collaboration at some level Right. Every modernization doesn't require you to have a team of 30 people to evaluate it, but some modernization efforts would generate a lot of interest in our state really probably in most states and one example is you know, we are working on a punch out catalog system similar to what NASPO actually has now for the value point contracts, and you know we've brought a vendor on board and we're working through designing the system. And we have interest from our vendor community through designing the system. And we have interest from our vendor community, both on the small business side, the disabled veteran business enterprise side, as well as our large scale vendors that say hey, you know, we'd like to give you some input before you roll this out, because ultimately we will have catalogs and we want to be able to ensure that it's going to work with your system and then also our state departments.

Angela Shell:

I think change management has to be a big part of any modernization, especially if it's a digital modernization and IT system, whatever it is. I think that has to be really critical and I think oftentimes we fall short in that area. If we fall short somewhere, it's maybe in that change management. And that really includes that user testing, the user acceptance testing, the user experience testing, which is really the critical piece around. You know, does this work for you? Right, we've changed business processes. Tell us if this works and if it doesn't, tell us why and how we might be able to fix it.

Angela Shell:

And that's really a collaboration with your internal state stakeholders as well as your vendor community. And I think you know we have lots of modernization efforts that we're all working on right across all states. And you know, I think we continue to engage in feedback on what's working, what's not working. We have several stakeholder groups that are our purchasing authority folks and then our vendor community, and they're separate. You know we have a small business advisory council and we take all of this in when we look at how we can modernize our processes. And I think if we did not do that, then that modernization we'd have a real challenge getting it accepted and would we know if it's something that's really necessary or something that's really a challenge or a pain point for our communities. And so that's why I think collaboration is really, really essential when you're looking at modernization efforts, because you know resources are not never ending for all of us, and so we have to really put our resources on what's going to have impact.

Julia McIlroy:

No, that's great. I especially like that you are focusing on the user experience, because you want folks in the system and using it and if it's complicated or not intuitive then they'll just be. You know, to heck with this and I'll go take my P card and go purchase whatever that thing might be, but instead you want to drive usage to your punch-out catalog and all of your contracted vendors. So I appreciate that you're having a focus on the user experience. That's great. So modernization often involves risk. How do you create space for experimentation while still managing public dollars?

Angela Shell:

is our request for innovative ideas to process. Some people call it RFI 2, rfi squared, but it is a process that we it's sort of a combination of our existing processes. So in California, we have a very strong statute on negotiation. This allows us to do that. You know, we sort of flipped procurement on its end. So, instead of putting a procurement out there that has 70 pages of very specific requirements, you just give us a price, tell us that your system meets this. We flipped it on its end and we've said here's a challenge that we have in the state of California that we don't know how to fix. We're not there yet. So, industry, we want you to come back and tell us how you might fix this challenge. So it's basically they submit a concept paper, a proposal, if you will. We evaluate those and then we bring in a pool of vendors to go in and actually test their concept in a secured environment in and actually test their concept in a secured environment, sometimes in a real world environment, such as in our fire prone areas. When we rolled out our first RFI squared back in 2019, we actually had the vendor go test it in actual fire season so that we could ensure it would work, and so they get this opportunity to test it and the state gets to decide do we want this, do we like this, does it work, yes or no? And if we say yes, we move into then a scaled up contract that could be a minimum viable product or it could be a full scale. Here's the solution, fully implemented, and let's move forward. Here's the solution fully implement it and let's move forward. And we recently did this with our generative AI program that we engaged in over the last couple of years and really it allowed us to see what generative AI solutions were doing and how they were modifying things. And in this instance, we paid our vendors a dollar to test in the system, and we did end up with nearly all of the contracts that we went through a scaled up version. It wasn't a full version of their solution, but a scaled up solution that was lower cost and still allows us that flexibility. Okay, now we're going to implement this, but at a smaller scale. And how is that going to fit within the state's financial constraints? Are we going to get all of the needs that we thought we were going to get? So that's been a really good opportunity for us to create space for that experimentation.

Angela Shell:

We have also done a few things in the last couple of years where we are putting a sort of a challenge statement out to a specific industry and we say, come in and demonstrate your solution. You have 15 minutes Like this is your 15 minutes of fame to show us how might your solution do this. We're not buying anything at that time, but everybody gets to come in and see from state departments. So these challenges to see, okay, well, how would these solutions work? So it's a little bit of market evaluation versus an unfair commitment to a vendor to come in and you know, well, we've seen your product but we haven't seen anybody else's right. So that's really given us an opportunity to look at things that might be riskier processes, like our generative AI, and give it an evaluation before you enter into a contract where you're spending the state's dollars, the taxpayer dollars, but it's not really a viable solution. So I think that's really helped us look at testing out some of these solutions before we actually fully invest in them.

Julia McIlroy:

So these suppliers are having an opportunity to give an elevator pitch, basically to the fourth largest economy in the world. I know there's debate Sometimes I hear fourth largest, sometimes sixth largest. Either way, a huge opportunity for them to pitch to a huge buyer, correct?

Angela Shell:

Yes, yes, it's a great opportunity, and again in that sort of controlled environment, because as procurement officials we're always worried are we crossing the line here? If we're doing market studies or market evaluations, where do we get to the point where you're crossing over the line now, and now it becomes an environment that maybe isn't a fair playing field for all of our bidders. So it's really a great way for the state to see vendors. You're not involved in an active procurement and everybody gets to see the same thing and you get to ask questions.

Julia McIlroy:

So it's really a great opportunity, and, of course, our pillars of public procurement are fairness, transparency, upholding ethics, and so you're still able to do that while giving these suppliers an opportunity to show you their products. So that's great. That's very innovative. I love it. So what's one outdated procurement practice you think will be obsolete in the next five years, and what might replace it?

Angela Shell:

This is a challenging question because I think there's so many things that we do as part of our practices, as part of our policies, and, I think, every state, you have a set of codes that you follow and you're required to follow, and some of them are. They were put in place a very long time ago and I think all of us have to look at those and say, okay, is this still something that we need to do? Right, it was put in place 30 years ago. Is this something that still needs to be required? And we are doing that actively in the state of California. We are, as part of our modernization efforts, we are looking at, you know, some of the requirements that are part of the process and whether they're still necessary and, in my mind, I think, one of the things that we've been looking at for quite some time and I know there's other states that are really already well beyond the state of California in this way but for us, we're really looking at this process of paper bid submittals, if you will. I mean, I don't know that anybody's mailing in a box of you know, 50 binders for a bid response today, but we are getting them by email, we're getting them in somebody's mailbox and we still have the challenges around.

Angela Shell:

Well, my bid couldn't be submitted.

Angela Shell:

Some lawsuits occasionally around this idea that you know we submitted it to you. It was done in some level of electronic submitting your bid to an email box or some person. I think will go away in the next five years and I think we'll be looking at using bid systems. So, instead of you creating your bid separately and putting it into a PDF file or whatever file a state might use, you're going to go into a system and you're going to start answering questions and you're going to type in what you need into that system and you're going to hit a button that just says send and all of that is going to be recorded in the bid system if you will and that to me, I think for an online bidding portal, right, that everybody's sending it in. I think that will eliminate what we frequently see with things like well, you know your email system rejected it or you know something happened with the system at, you know, 4.59pm. For many states in the next five years, this sort of separate bidding system will perhaps become obsolete.

Julia McIlroy:

Well, someone's listening to this podcast and just got a great idea for a new company, right, the creation of exactly what you're talking about. I don't think it's you and I, but someone some entrepreneur, so that's great, that's interesting. But someone some entrepreneur, so that's great, that's interesting. So what skills will procurement professionals need to thrive over?

Angela Shell:

the next five to 10 years? Another crystal ball question for you. I think procurement has changed a lot, just even in the last five years, with what happened with COVID and a lot of the ways in which we as states had to pivot with our procurement practices. Industries had to pivot with their supply chain practices, and so I think that really was the start of states, at least in our state, really evaluating what do our procurement professionals look like today with their skill sets and what are they going to need? What changed significantly from the days of old where look, here's the requirements you either meet them or you don't. You submit them, and if you don't, you're out. If you do and your price is good, you're in. Right, there's, you know. This is our process.

Angela Shell:

I think what procurement professionals are really going to have to look at are things like critical thinking, skills around, like pricing and data analysis, because, again, I do believe that the idea that we're just going to keep buying what we've been buying, you know, for the last 20 years. I think that that goes away to some extent because industries have changed, and especially in the IT industry, which has always been an ever evolving industry, but especially so today. I think procurement professionals are really going to need to hone in on negotiation skills, having that ability to work with stakeholders, both government and industry, on what works in procurements and why. And I think it's more than just negotiating the best price or negotiating the best term. It's really opening ourselves up to having an understanding of why a state department might need a specific clause to be negotiated or a specific piece of equipment to be included in a procurement, and then why the industry might need to say, hey look, I can't agree to this clause or that requirement for these reasons. This is how things have changed, and so I think that level of negotiation skills is different than, hey, this is where you need to get to with the best price, and I'm going to really push you to do that.

Angela Shell:

I also think that our procurement professionals are going to need to be, you know, strategic thinkers, sort of forward thinking mentality, about really evaluating what's coming up. So it isn't just about you know getting your procurement out there, managing your procurement, it's really also about knowing what's coming up in the future and what skills you know do we need to be able to become more strategic about what we're doing, and I think that ties into things like, you know, budget concerns, where you know states may not have the same level of funding. And then, lastly, I think, the customer service skills. I think those need to also pivot a bit to where we look at ourselves, not just, as you know, the procurement official that processes your procurement. We're really the person that helps you achieve your mission, your vision, your goals, and how can we help you do that?

Angela Shell:

You know, central procurement office oftentimes is the, you know, the agency that sort of enforces the state's rules, and you know that oversight entity. And I think we have to get away from thinking of ourselves as the oversight entity and more as hey, we're here, you know we have customer service to you Like, how can we help you get your work done? How can we make it easier for you, given the services and the things that we provide? And I think that's a little bit of a pivot that I think the new workforce that's coming in is positioned to do that, because I think they do think about things differently than maybe somebody like me that's been around in the state for almost 31 years. Right, we had a very different perspective when we came into state service.

Julia McIlroy:

Those of us that you know have a lot of time, and so I think now is the time to really capitalize on a different skill set that we bring in with a new workforce and then hone in on some of these other areas you know that's a great point With all the technology that we have available and you've mentioned many that you're using in the state of California In the end, if you're in procurement, in public procurement, you need to be a people person because you're helping someone get what they need to be able to do their jobs.

Angela Shell:

Yes.

Julia McIlroy:

So we're not buying it for ourselves, we're buying it on behalf of someone else. So no, that's a great point. So I'm curious you know you're in central procurement throughout the entire state how many procurement professionals are there?

Angela Shell:

Oh, we have hundreds of procurement professionals across our state. Just in my own shop I have just doing actual buying well over a hundred. And so, you know, for large departments like our correctional, you know department or our transportation department, there's, you know, around the same number of procurement professionals really in their procurement shops. I mean, you bring in the cities and the counties and you're now in the thousands with respect to numbers of buyers.

Julia McIlroy:

Yeah, absolutely. And then you include higher ed yes, you know, k-12, et cetera. So it's no doubt in the thousands of professional procurement folks. And, as I mentioned earlier, california has the fourth largest economy in the world, so not just the US, but in the world. So I would imagine that it's challenging to manage suppliers because there are so many suppliers that want to do business with the state of California. So how do you manage your suppliers, especially new ones that want to enter the system?

Angela Shell:

Yeah, that's a great question because, yes, we do have a lot of interest in procurement for the state of California and we have varying ways of engaging with our supplier community. We have a very large number of small businesses and disabled, veteran business enterprises in the state of California and we actually have a mandate for 25% of a department's spend each year has to go to small business. It's now a statutory requirement in our state, and so we do see a lot of new businesses that are arguably small businesses that want to do business with the state, and so we've started engaging in training. We just are right in the middle of a training program for our small businesses on things like marketing to the state, how to use our fiscal system, and then we're going in depth with things like prompt payment, things like our leverage procurement agreements and how are those used by state departments, and then departmental contracting and what do you need to know? Departments and then departmental contracting and what do you need to know right, If you're going to bid on a department contract versus a, you know, Department of General Services leveraged procurement agreement. So we do a lot of effort around, you know, engaging with our vendor community. We also have a separate office in the state of California that is our state advocate for small business in the state of California.

Angela Shell:

So not just small business for procurement purposes, but small business across the state. They have a wealth of information about things like what are regulatory requirements in the state. You know where can you get financing in the state. You know what banks are willing to. You know help small businesses even get started, and so we rely on them to kind of be that forefront of.

Angela Shell:

If you want to do business in the state of California, here's some information about. You know, if you want to be a contractor, you have to have a contractor's license, right? If you want to, you know again, have you know funding to help your business get started? Here's where you go. And then, once that happens, they kick them over to us and here at DGS is where we then pull in those businesses and we do a robust training program with them.

Angela Shell:

We also do one-on-one, so you can go to our website and you can actually schedule a one-on-one meeting with my advocacy team that I have here in the department. And just because you're not certified as a small business doesn't mean, you know, you can't get help. So if you're, even if you're a large business, you know we're happy to help talk to you about how it works in the state of California, and then, if you can be certified as a small business, we want to encourage you to do that because that also brings in incentives. We have a special procurement program that is just direct awards to small businesses or disabled vets, and so we have a lot of resources that we try to engage in working with our vendor community to get them educated on how the state does business.

Julia McIlroy:

Well, that one-on-one opportunity is invaluable. It sounds like you're really making an effort to work with your small businesses and bring them into the vendor community. That's great. So, angela, last question what has been your most memorable procurement?

Angela Shell:

That's a really tough question because I think there's you know so many things that we see and there's really a couple for me. But really the first one is around COVID and it isn't just a single procurement, it's really you know what we did, what we accomplished during COVID as a state from the procurement perspective. So you know, we purchased over $3 billion in goods and services in you know months, a matter of months, right, and you know we quickly realized, just on the PPE side, that we could not do that with just my own staff here in the Department of General Services. So we actually pulled buyers out of state departments and brought them in in a team effort and they, all you know, sat together on a daily basis, you know, seven days a week, 14 hours a day, and they were able to accomplish the goals that we set in place for things like the number of you know N95 masks or you know the number of, you know, gloves and those sorts of things. And I think they immediately, you know, sort of gelled together as a team under this common, you know, need that that we had to get PPE. You know they did things like standing up acute care facilities, establishing vaccination, vaccination sites, testing sites, you know all of these things that you know we don't. We don't do that normally.

Angela Shell:

This was just a whole nother world and I know other states you know had this same, you know type of engagement that they had to. You know we had to step in and do something different and I think for me, the results of that effort I will forever be proud of. You know what we did together as a team, how they work together. There wasn't this well, that's not really my job, that's your job and why don't do that in my department? No, everybody stepped up. They took command from a single entity and said let's go do it. And I think that for me, that entire process that we engaged was really huge and I think it really showed the power of procurement just in the state, not the power of procurement in DGS or the power of procurement in, you know, caltrans or any of these other departments that stepped up. We were a team and for me that was extremely memorable.

Angela Shell:

And you know, I think, one last story, it's really the end result, for you know, we purchased Fire Retardant California is known to be a state that we have wildfires and we do that on behalf of our entities that need to put out fires, and I had a fire at my house. I mean, it wasn't at my house, it was right next to my house in terms of the location and it was very scary. It burnt down homes in the area and I actually got to see the plane come in that carries that fire retardant and drop it so that houses next to mine did not burn down. And there is nothing more gratifying than seeing a fire put out with the fire retardant that you know your team purchased and the importance of why that is needed. It was just a huge moment as well.

Angela Shell:

So I think those two things really stand out because as procurement officials, you don't often get to see the end result. You're in the middle. You don't get to see the end result of what you bought. You work with a program, you buy the thing, it goes back to the program and they implement. And I think anytime a procurement official gets to see the end result of what they buy, to me that's huge. That is huge because I think that sort of resonates with you as an employee and I think getting to see the end result of that just really makes the importance of why we do what we do.

Julia McIlroy:

That's a remarkable story. Thank you so much for sharing it and, yes, the sense of pride that you must have felt in that moment and also the fear Fires are really scary. I lived in Idaho for many years and they're very scary and the amount of damage they do is unbelievable. But again, that sense of pride that you've must've felt in that moment and knowing the small but significant not small large and significant role that you and your staff played, that must've felt really good.

Angela Shell:

It did, it did. I will always have those top of mind. It really shows the capability of what procurement officials can do when asked. You know to step up during a crisis, as well as just you know the good work that you do every day because we buy our fire retardant every year. It's not like that's you know a special thing that we do, but when you get to see the end result, it really solidifies the good of what you do.

Julia McIlroy:

So true. So, angela, thanks again for joining me today. I very much appreciate it.

Angela Shell:

Well, thank you so much for having me and it's been a great conversation and I hope that you know our thoughts here in the state of California are helpful to others that I'm sure are experiencing the same things, because we're not too different across states.

Julia McIlroy:

So thank you, and to our friends in public procurement, remember we work in the sunshine. Bye for now. Thank you.

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