Community members at some Iowa Board of Regents universities believe the board could allow university communities to play a bigger role in contractual services.

In January, the Iowa Board of Regents released a request proposal for a new design for the entire regents webpage. Professional firms could place proposals or bids to be chosen as the company rewarded the design contract. This was one of various request proposals placed by the regents since the start of the academic year.

However, last week at a public hearing, many University of Iowa community members expressed concern and disapproval towards the regents’ bidding methods. Among the bids questioned was the regents’ recent website design bid.

Judith Pascoe, a UI professor of English, said she believes the regents’ constant outsourcing is depriving students attending regent universities of opportunities.

“There are plenty of people here at the UI and other regents institutions that have the ability to redesign their website and would be happy to do so,” she said. “The regents are pretty removed from who they serve. They have a consistent pattern of hiring out-of-state contractors and firms for projects that could be assessed by those who know the Iowa community better.”

Pascoe said working collaboratively with students would be a show of good faith on the regents’ part.

By law, the regents are required to give preference to Iowa-based businesses and firms if the product or services are comparable in price and firms meet specified requirements.

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Josh Lehman, senior communications director for the board, said the regents felt the website redesign project would be best handled by a professional firm.

“The Board Office had a set of technical requirements as well as a specific timetable for the web redesign project, with hopes of completion during the Spring 2016 semester,” he said. “Considering these factors among others, the Board Office felt that contracting with a professional firm was the best course of action.”

Opinions surrounding the issues aren’t limited to those within the UI community. In the past, the Iowa State University Student Government has expressed frustrations about the regents’ lack of regard for student input.

Dan Breitbarth, president of ISU Student Government, said he feels conflicted about the regents’ method of bidding.

“I see the benefit of having students design it, but that can take an extensive amount of time to setup when you could simply pay a business to do the same work. Time is money, as you know,” he said. “However, I think students should always be looked to for opportunities like this.”

The regents were scheduled to approve a firm for the website design contract on Feb. 5, according to the request for proposal, no contract has been awarded at the time of writing this article. When the contract is awarded, the firm is expected to complete the design within 16 weeks.

Lehman said the board was aware of the complaints made against the biding projects, but could not say how or if the concerns would be addressed.