Flynn: A 'Bigger Splash' for PRC

Preparing to expand dramatically its state and local government business, Litton-PRC Inc. has tapped California's former chief information officer, John Flynn, as vice president of its state and local government business group.

Flynn, who also has served as CIO for the state of Massachusetts, plans to use his knowledge of the public sector and its unique problems to build PRC's state and local practice into a "major tier one player" on par with American Management Systems, Andersen Consulting, Unisys Corp. and other top firms.

"PRC wants to make a bigger splash in this market," he said.

Flynn discussed job opportunities with a number of companies, but decided to go with PRC because of its desire to push aggressively into new business areas. "We think there are great opportunities in human resources, ERP [enterprise resource planning], networking and infrastructure, and electronic commerce. We're not ruling anything out," he said.

Public safety and criminal justice account for about 95 percent of the company's state and local revenues, he said.

McLean, Va.-based PRC is one of the nation's top 12 systems integrators in the state and local market, as measured by annual sales, according to market research firm Federal Sources Inc.

Flynn has his work cut out for him if he intends to raise PRC's state and local revenues of under $50 million to the level of the top six firms, which each brought in more than $150 million in annual sales.
SI International Inc., the newest player in the IT roll-up game, announced its first acquisition Jan. 19 ? the purchase of Statistica Inc. of Gaithersburg, Md. SI is headed by former CACI International executive Ray Oleson.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Statistica had $30 million in revenue in 1998 and has 300 employees.

Statistica provides database management and visa and passport services to the Department of State. Vienna, Va.-based SI was founded in October.

AT&T Corp., which lost out to Sprint and MCI WorldCom for the $5 billion federal long distance contract known as FTS 2001, is refusing to back away from the government market.

Mary Jane McKeever, president of AT&T Government Markets, said the firm will decide whether to protest those awards after a debriefing by the General Services Administration. As of Jan. 19, the debriefing had not been scheduled.

AT&T is talking with GSA about pursuing the Metropolitan Area Acquisition contracts for local and long distance services in several major U.S. cities, McKeever said. The first is expected to be awarded in April for the New York area.

Sprint won the first FTS 2001 contract in late December. MCI was named a winner on Jan. 12. GSA officials described their choices as being value based, but price also played a major role.Wang Government Services has grabbed a piece of Lockheed Martin Corp.'s $3.4 billion consolidated space operations contract with NASA. Lockheed Martin picked Wang last week to provide the wide area network data distribution services under a contract worth $453 million over 10 years.

Wang will consolidate NASA's wide area networks for its four enterprises: Space Science, Mission to Planet Earth, Human Exploration and Development of Space, and Aeronautics and Space Transportation. NASA is the first federal agency to outsource all of its WAN operations, Wang officials said. The win is a strategic one for Wang, because the company expects other agencies to follow suit.
The Department of Transportation gave 25 companies a piece of the $10 billion, seven-year Information Technology Omnibus Procurement II contract Jan. 14.

ITOP II is a follow-on to the highly successful ITOP I, which hit its $1 billion ceiling in about two years rather than the expected seven. ITOP II is a broad services contract divided into three categories: information systems engineering, systems operations and management and information systems security. Several companies won awards in more than one category.

The winners are: Advanced Management Technology Inc.; Allied Technology Group Inc.; Anteon Corp.; Booz-Allen & Hamilton Inc.; Catapult Technology Ltd.; Computer Resource Management Inc.; Datamat Systems Research Inc.; Electronic Data Systems Corp.; EER Systems Inc.; FC Business Systems; GTE Inc. and Integrated Management Systems Inc.

Others are Litton/TASC; Lockheed Martin Services Inc.; Logicon Inc.; Performance Engineering Corp.; QSS Group Inc.; RS Information Systems Inc.; Science Applications International Corp.; Signal Corp.; SRA International Inc.; Stanley Associates Inc.; Centech Group Inc.; TWM Associates Inc.; Unisys Corp.
The Janus Group Inc. of Bridgewater, N.J., has teamed with software maker MicroStrategy Inc. to provide systems integration services to government and commercial clients.

Though Janus currently doesn't have any government customers, it started developing a government focus late last year. Janus, a technology management consulting firm, plans to offer IT services to both federal and state agencies.

Vienna, Va.-based MicroStrategy has signed more than 150 integrators and service providers to help install its decision support software, which helps organizations make better use of stored data.
Four Republican lawmakers have sent a letter to President Clinton urging him to make the year 2000 computer crisis a national priority, and to reevaluate the federal government's Y2K needs before submitting the 2000 budget.

The Jan. 14 letter also raised concerns about how quickly Y2K emergency funds are being spent. The letter was signed by Reps. Steve Horn, R-Calif.; Richard Armey, R-Texas; Constance Morella, R-Md.; and Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah. The 105th Congress set aside $3.35 billion in emergency Y2K funding and more than $1 billion has already been spent, according to the letter. Lawmakers want emergency funds preserved for vital year 2000 remediation projects.
PeopleSoft Inc. of Pleasanton, Calif., and Andersen Consulting of Chicago have expanded their partnership to 35 countries in Asia, Europe and the Americas.

The two will work together offering software, services and training to government and education customers worldwide. PeopleSoft makes business software.

The agreement won't alter PeopleSoft Federal's partnership with Andersen. They've worked together since 1993. "They've been a great partner for us," said Jonathan Klem, vice president of PeopleSoft Federal.
Add fast rising Usinternetworking Inc. to the roster of Internet companies going public.

The Annapolis, Md.-based Internet services company, also known as USi, filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission Jan. 15 to raise a maximum of $86.2 million from its first sale of public stock.

Christopher McCleary, USi's chief executive, has proved a whiz at raising money for the young company so far. In the last 12 months, McCleary has raised $95 million in venture capital and vendor financing from companies like Grotech Capital Group, Cisco Systems Inc. and Siebel Systems Inc.

USinternetworking's prospectus didn't disclose how many shares will be offered or what the asking price will be.