# NCPA Cooperative Purchasing (Region 14 ESC) The **National Cooperative Purchasing Alliance (NCPA)**, administered by the **Education Service Center Region 14** (Region 14 ESC) of Abilene, Texas, as the lead-agency contracting authority. NCPA is one of the large national multi-state cooperative-purchasing platforms that lets governmental entities ride competitively-bid contracts administered by the host (Region 14 ESC) without conducting their own competitive procurement. As of 2026, NCPA contracts are publicly cataloged on the OMNIA Partners portal (`omniapartners.com`) — NCPA is part of the OMNIA Partners cooperative-purchasing umbrella while Region 14 ESC remains the lead-agency contracting party of record. The Arkansas State Police's 2024–2027 ELSAG ALPR procurement under State Term Contract 4600055190 — which references "Region 14 ESC-TX, Contract #05-68 (Cooperative Contract)" — is the corpus's first documented Arkansas LE-agency procurement on the NCPA cooperative. > [!correction] > **2026-06-05 — TIPS/NCPA misidentification corrected.** The 2026-06-05 ASP-batch-1 ingest concept page identified this cooperative as **TIPS / Region 14 ESC** because the wiki maintainer assumed a Texas-Region-14-administered cooperative was the same as TIPS. Tier-2 web-research review establishes the correct identification: **NCPA** (National Cooperative Purchasing Alliance) is administered by Region 14 ESC at Abilene TX; **TIPS** (The Interlocal Purchasing System) is administered by Region 8 ESC at Mt. Pleasant TX. They are two distinct national cooperative-purchasing programs hosted by two distinct Texas ESCs. Contract #05-68 — the cooperative-contract reference on Arkansas State Term Contract 4600055190 — is an NCPA contract, not a TIPS contract. The prior `wiki/concepts/TIPS Cooperative Purchasing Network.md` page has been superseded by this page and removed; citing pages have been updated to link here. The original Tier-1 ASP source documents (`1513_001.pdf`, pp. 25 and 28) say "Region 14 ESC-TX, Contract #05-68" — they do not say "TIPS." (Tier-2 anchors: [Selex ES NCPA RFP 15-22 Response — Contract #05-68](../../web%20archive/2026-06-05/omniapartners.com/selex-es-response-ncpa-rfp-15-22.md), and [CoProcure record for the sister NCPA Contract #05-67 with SchoolPass](https://www.coprocure.us/solicitations/23cc2dfa-3434-4fdc-830c-34a0afa3c1c8/contracts/ncpa2_05-67_schoolpass) — same NCPA contract series, same procurement vehicle.) ## How it appears in the corpus [[Term Contract 4600055190 and PO 4502235324 — Initial Leonardo ELSAG Buy|Arkansas State Term Contract 4600055190]] cites the cooperative-contract reference explicitly (Tier-1 corpus, `1513_001.pdf`, p. 28): > *"Reference Tracking: Region 14 ESC-TX, Contract #05-68 (Cooperative Contract)"* And on the larger PO 4502235324 (Tier-1 corpus, `1513_001.pdf`, p. 25): > *"Region 14 ESC - TX / Contract Number: 05-68"* The Term Contract holds [[Leonardo US Cyber and Security Solutions, LLC]] (vendor 100257028) as the contracting party at a target value of $460,294.80 USD. The Arkansas purchase orders draw against this Term Contract on the strength of the Region 14 ESC competitive procurement — i.e., Arkansas adopted the result of Region 14 ESC's prior **NCPA RFP 15-22** competitive process for License Plate Recognition Systems and rode the resulting pricing. ## The underlying competitive procurement (NCPA RFP 15-22) Tier-2 record — *Selex ES Inc., a Leonardo Company, NCPA RFP 15-22*, submitted 03/21/2022 (primary public record, [Selex ES NCPA RFP 15-22 Response](../../web%20archive/2026-06-05/omniapartners.com/selex-es-response-ncpa-rfp-15-22.md)): - **Solicitation:** NCPA RFP 15-22 for Fixed and Vehicle License Plate Recognition Systems. - **Lead agency:** Region 14 ESC (Abilene, TX), which "review[s] and evaluate[s] all responses in accordance with, and subject to, the relevant statutes, ordinances, rules and regulations that govern its procurement practices" (Tier-2 quote). - **NCPA's role:** "NCPA will assist the lead agency in evaluating proposals" (Tier-2 quote). On award, the vendor enters the NCPA Administration Agreement establishing the quarterly-sales-volume reporting obligation. - **Vendor:** Selex ES Inc., the then-current Leonardo US subsidiary at 4221 Tudor Lane, Greensboro NC 27410 — the same physical facility and corporate-chain entity that subsequently became Leonardo US Cyber and Security Solutions, LLC (the named vendor on the Arkansas Term Contract). - **Standard contract structure:** "all contracts are for a period of three (3) years with an option to renew for up to two (2) additional one-year terms" (Tier-2 quote). The Arkansas State Term Contract 4600055190 (8-month initial term plus two 1-year renewals through 2027-04-30) is a state-side wrapper with a shorter local term that draws against the longer-term NCPA Contract #05-68 underlying the cooperative pricing. ## How the procurement vehicle works The cooperative-purchasing structure is the same as the OMNIA / Sourcewell / NASPO ValuePoint / Texas DIR vehicles documented at [[Little Rock Police Department|LRPD]] in [[CLR-2026-778]] (and given that NCPA is now part of the OMNIA Partners umbrella, the institutional overlap is substantive): 1. **Region 14 ESC competitively bids contracts** for product categories (here, plate-recognition systems via NCPA RFP 15-22). 2. **Vendors who win the competitive bid** get NCPA contracts (here, Leonardo / Selex ES holds Contract #05-68). 3. **Member governments** — state agencies, municipalities, counties, school districts — may ride any active NCPA contract by referencing the contract number on their own procurement documents. Membership in NCPA is free per the lead-agency self-description. 4. **Riding the NCPA contract** allows the member government to skip its own competitive-procurement requirement, on the legal theory that the upstream Region 14 ESC procurement satisfied the underlying competitive-bidding interest. For Arkansas state agencies, the legal authority for riding NCPA / Region 14 ESC is administered through the Arkansas Office of State Procurement (OSP). The State of Arkansas Term Contract serves as the Arkansas-side procurement-paperwork wrapper around the NCPA cooperative-contract reference. ## Cross-jurisdiction comparison | Cooperative | Host | Documented Arkansas LE customers | |---|---|---| | **NCPA / Region 14 ESC** (this page) | Texas Region 14 Education Service Center, Abilene TX (under OMNIA Partners umbrella) | **Arkansas State Police** (Leonardo / ELSAG ALPR, Contract #05-68, via reseller [[John Wright Associates, Inc.]]) | | OMNIA Partners | Cobb County GA + Hennepin County MN (parent cooperative; NCPA is now part of OMNIA) | LRPD (Flock LPR via Insight Public Sector; Cellebrite via Carahsoft; Guardian Alliance via Strategic Communications) | | Sourcewell | Sourcewell (Minnesota) | LRPD (Motorola Watchguard M500; Fusus 2022; Apricot/Bonterra) | | NASPO ValuePoint | NASPO ValuePoint (multistate, Oklahoma + states) | LRPD (Motorola CommandCentral / iCloud Storage; Bonterra Impact Management) | | Texas DIR | Texas Department of Information Resources | LRPD (Utility Associates Rocket Modems) | The NCPA vehicle is the corpus's fifth distinct cooperative-purchasing platform documented and the first at an Arkansas state-LE agency. **NCPA's parent-umbrella relationship with OMNIA Partners** means that LRPD's Flock procurement (via OMNIA Partners cooperative #23-6692-03, Cobb County GA lead) and ASP's ELSAG procurement (via NCPA Contract #05-68, Region 14 ESC lead) sit under the same cooperative-purchasing parent organization, even though the LE outcomes (Flock at LRPD; ELSAG at ASP) are different and the lead-agency contracting parties are different. ## Stakeholders - **Region 14 ESC** (Abilene TX) — the cooperative-host and lead-agency contracting party, responsible for running the NCPA RFP 15-22 competitive procurement and administering the NCPA member-contract infrastructure. - **NCPA (National Cooperative Purchasing Alliance)** — the cooperative organization itself; receives quarterly-sales-volume reports from vendors per the NCPA Administration Agreement; assists Region 14 ESC in evaluating RFP proposals. - **[[OMNIA Partners]]** — the parent cooperative-purchasing umbrella that NCPA is part of (acquired 2022); the public-facing portal for NCPA contract documents. - **NCPA member-governments** — entities free-enrolled and authorized to ride active contracts. - **Vendors with active NCPA contracts** — including [[Leonardo US Cyber and Security Solutions, LLC]] (Contract #05-68 for Fixed and Vehicle License Plate Recognition Systems). - **Resellers riding the NCPA contracts** — including [[John Wright Associates, Inc.]] for the ELSAG line in the Arkansas market. - **The State of Arkansas** — through the Office of State Procurement, authorizes Arkansas state agencies to ride NCPA contracts. The Arkansas Department of Public Safety – Fiscal Section signs the State Term Contract that wraps the NCPA reference for ASP's purchase. ## NCPA vs TIPS — the corrected distinction These two national cooperative-purchasing programs are commonly conflated in non-specialist sources because both are administered by Texas Education Service Centers and both serve the same buyer-side governmental-entity market. They are distinct: | Cooperative | Lead-agency ESC | Lead-agency location | Parent umbrella | |---|---|---|---| | **NCPA** (this page) | Region 14 ESC | Abilene, TX | OMNIA Partners (since ~2020 rebranding) | | **TIPS** | Region 8 ESC | Mt. Pleasant, TX | Independent of OMNIA | The Arkansas State Police's "Region 14 ESC-TX, Contract #05-68" is an NCPA contract. There is no NCPA Contract #05-68 for license plate recognition. ## Notes - The OMNIA Partners supplier portal returned "Page Not Found" for `omniapartners.com/suppliers/leonardo-us-cyber-and-security-solutions-llc/public-sector/contract-documents` as of 2026-06-05, indicating the Leonardo supplier microsite has been retired. The PDFs referenced in this page remain reachable to stealth-proxy fetchers at their direct file-server URLs but not to standard fetchers. - See [[Cooperative Purchasing Vehicle]] for the general concept and the cross-platform comparison table. - The earlier `wiki/concepts/TIPS Cooperative Purchasing Network.md` page is removed this cycle; all internal references that previously linked to the old `TIPS Cooperative Purchasing Network` page are re-pointed here.