Walter Bikowitz: Served as the Chief of State Purchasing Operations within the DMS Division of State Purchasing for over two years.  He currently serves in the role of the Director of the MyFloridaMarketPlace (MFMP) operation, the State of Florida’s eProcurement system and oversees the new strategic sourcing team.  

Prior to working with the State of Florida, Walter spent thirty five years with the State of New York in a variety of procurement positions finally retiring as Director of State Purchasing.  As Director he (1) instituted a training program for CPPO and CPPB certifications through the NIGP courses, (2) created the award winning homeland security purchasing program known as HIRE (Florida is one of 17 states using HIRE), (3) initiated aggregate strategic sourcing in technology that netted the state $37 million in annual savings and won (4) NASPO awards for state contract outreach to other eligible users such as library services.

Eric Swanson: Serves in the role of the MFMP Vendor Manager within the Division of State Purchasing and has been in that role for two years now.  Eric has developed some innovative training for vendors initiating the monthly vendor meetings (“Fireside Chats”) using WebEx technology.  Eric also was instrumental in developing the new Vendor Information Portal (VIP) and the VIP provided several enhancements that make the MFMP vendor registration and fee payment processes more user friendly.  Prior to joining MFMP, Eric worked with the Department of Juvenile Justice for several years.