HHS told us that HHS pays $146.64 per month per user for e-mail; that this
charge covers connect ivity, storage, and other e-mail services; and that this
charge is independent of the number of e-mails that are sent or received. HHS
also told us that the Office of the Secretary pays $10.44 per month per
telephone line, that this charge covers all featu res associated with the
lines and the phones, and that this charge is independent of the number of
phone calls made per month. Each phone call, whether local or long distance,
is charged at a unit cost of $0.014 per minute.
I wonder what the breakdown of the costs is. That number seems way steep.
My first question would be what archival requirements they have for e-mail.
Some governments have legal requirements for incoming official mail - whether on paper or electronic - to be printed off and stamped with the time and date, and manually entered into a journal and archived in multiple copies in separate locations for audit and open access purposes. Others may "just" require an electronic journal, but tend to still have very strict requirements on access, and particular security mechanisms to prevent modification of the journal.
Archival requirements can easily make up the vast majority of cost of processing mail if the rules are complicated enough.
Depending on the extent of "unusual" requirements like that, it may not be that bad. In any case, without more details about exactly what is included it's not very easy to assess whether or not the cost is unreasonable...
If I was to guess a little.
-Email Certificate
-Outlook License
-Online Outlook license
-Remote VPN services and remote dialup + support
Which is a big pile of money off the top.
-Help Desk
-Hardware/Cloud storage and what not, probably a small portion.
They probably have specific requirements. They may or may not be worthwhile. They may or may not make sense. But any vendor is going to satisfy those requirements, and charge for knowing, implementing and demonstrating those requirements.
