# Flock Camera-as-a-Service Procurement Model The **business model** by which Flock Safety bundles hardware, software, deployment, and support into a single recurring fee. Customers do not buy cameras; they subscribe to a service that includes cameras as part of the package. The model has procurement-process implications that distinguish it from traditional municipal capital-asset purchases. ## How it appears in the corpus Per the executed [[Flock Safety Order Form and Contract]]: - 20 Flock Safety Falcon cameras "Included" in the recurring fee — **no per-camera unit price**. - 36-month initial term + 24-month auto-renewal. - $60,000 annual recurring fee; $180,000 contract total. - Professional Services line items billed at $0.00 against listed quantities (standard implementation, existing-infrastructure implementation, MASH-tested pole implementation — each priced per-installation but waived). - $5,700 discount applied to Professional Services. - Net 60 payment terms; annual billing. Per the [[AR - Conway PD - Welcome to Flock! (3) - Flock Kickoff Slide Deck]] "What Flock Covers / Does Not Cover" page: **Flock covers:** Cameras and online platform · Mounting poles · AC power kits (as needed) · Solar panels (as needed) · Site surveys and 811 scheduling · Installation labor costs · Specialist mounting equipment (MASH poles or adapters) · Cellular data coverage · Maintenance fees · Loss, theft, and damage to Flock equipment · Data storage for 30 days · Customer support and training. **Flock does not cover:** Traffic control · Electrician and ongoing electrical · Engineering drawings · Relocation fees · Contractor licensing · Permit application processing fees · Camera downtime due to power outage (AC-powered cameras only). ## Stakeholders - **Vendor (Flock)** — designs and markets the model. The model preserves Flock's ownership of the cameras and creates ongoing revenue. - **Agency** — pays a recurring fee; does not have title to the hardware; takes on the "what Flock does not cover" line items (traffic control, electrical, permits) as separate purchase requisitions through normal city processes. - **City Purchasing / Finance** — would normally review a hardware capital purchase; the service-subscription frame may exempt the deal from competitive-bidding requirements that attach to hardware purchases above certain thresholds. ## Notes - **Procurement-process implication: The subscription frame may avoid competitive-bid requirements.** Arkansas state procurement law and Conway city procurement ordinances govern thresholds for competitive-bid solicitation on hardware acquisitions. A service subscription may fall under a different category. This is an open legal question — for any deliverable that claims the procurement avoided competitive bidding, anchor the claim to specific Arkansas / Conway procurement rules. *Note:* in Conway's case the subscription frame was not the device by which competitive bidding was avoided — the Council instead passed [[Ordinance O-25-09 — LPR Bid Waiver and Asset Forfeiture Appropriation]] explicitly waiving competitive bidding on a sole-source theory. - **The "Flock does not cover" line items still cost the agency.** Even though the contract appears to bundle everything, the agency pays separately for electrical work, traffic control, permit fees, etc. The true cost of the deployment to Conway is **>$180K** by an amount the corpus does not enumerate. - **The non-appropriation clause** is a Camera-as-a-Service-model adaptation: traditional hardware purchases close-out at delivery; service subscriptions need a vendor-provided escape valve for the customer's appropriating body to deny continuing funding. Hall surfaced this clause in the December 2024 negotiation as a closing tool. See [[Morning - Procurement Pivot Thread]]. - **Compare to the legacy Genetec deployment.** The 6-camera Genetec system Conway PD ran before Flock was, per [[LPR Report First Half 2025]], operated against a server "owned and operated by the Conway Police Department" — i.e., on-premise infrastructure. The Flock migration is also a migration from "agency owns the data infrastructure" to "vendor owns the data infrastructure." That architectural shift has policy and oversight consequences (data residency, retention control, search auditability) that exceed the procurement-model question. - **Ordinance-language editing to avoid the sole-source filing regime.** The Conway case documents a distinct procurement-process adaptation that the Camera-as-a-Service model invites: when the City Council ordinance approving the procurement was drafted in January 2025, Mayor's-Office Procurement Manager Tiffany Maddox instructed the CPD drafter to remove the words "sole source" from the recitals, replacing them with *"the only provider who can supply the LPR system."* The substance was sole-source (one vendor, no other quotes); the form avoided the state-level filing the term would trigger. See [[Sole-Source Procurement Language Avoidance]] and [[Pre-Council Procurement Coordination Dec 2024 – Jan 2025]].