GSA Awards $25 Billion Contract

The General Services Administration named 10 companies as winners of its $25 billion Applications and Support for Widely Diverse End-user Requirements (ANSWER) contract Dec. 30. The contract is being administered by GSA's Region 9 in California, but will be available to agencies globally.

The winners of the indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract are Anteon, Booz-Allen & Hamilton, Computer Sciences Corp., DynCorp, EER Systems, Information Systems Support, ITS Corp., Litton-PRC Inc., Logicon Inc. and Science Applications International Corp.

The contract has a two-year base and eight one-year options. Services under the contract include design, analysis and definition, system development, software maintenance and facilities management.

The field of indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contracts will get a bit more crowded Jan. 14 when the Department of Transportation announces the winners of the $10 billion follow-on to the Information Technology Omnibus Procurement contract.

While 17 companies won spots with the first contract in 1996, as many as 30 may get ITOP II awards. The first contract was worth $1.1 billion over seven years, but hit its ceiling in two years, prompting the $10 billion limit on ITOP II.
Rep. Steve Horn, R-Calif., is just as happy as President Clinton that the Social Security Administration is now year 2000 compliant. Clinton congratulated the agency at a Washington press conference Dec. 28.

But Horn is more interested in talking about federal agencies that are behind schedule than those ahead of it. "The administration must focus on these problem agencies," said the lawmaker, who flagged the departments of Energy, Health and Human Services, Defense, Transportation and State.

In his latest report card, used to measure the progress of year 2000 repairs at 24 major federal agencies, Horn gave the government a D overall and failed five agencies. He's calling on the Clinton administration to focus on the issue at the federal, state and local level. "Time is running short," he said.
The new year brings new leadership for Booz-Allen & Hamilton. The systems integrator and consulting firm in late December named Ralph Shrader, who has been heading the company's government division, as its new chairman and chief executive.

Shrader will become CEO in April and chairman in October. William Stasior, who held both titles since 1991, is retiring.

Shrader joined Booz-Allen in 1974, became a vice president in 1978, and president of the government division, known as Worldwide Technology Business, in 1994.

Booz-Allen's public sector work grew by about 20 percent annually under Shrader. The division had about $700 million in revenue in 1997, and a contract backlog of $2.1 billion with federal, state and local clients.
Pennsylvania is investing millions of dollars in venture capital in start-up technology companies as part of a strategy to attract high-tech industry to the state.

Pennsylvania Early Stage Partners, a $50 million collaborative fund among the state government, the Pennsylvania School Employees Retirement System and Safeguard Scientifics Inc., invested $12 million in the first 11 companies selected for the program during 1998.

"With early stage venture funding, we can go after technology companies that are at the most critical stage of growth," said Gov. Tom Ridge. "Our goal is to see them grow and create jobs here, eventually creating a critical mass of technology companies in Pennsylvania."
L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. of New York and two affiliates plan to sell 9.3 million shares of stock in a secondary offering. The spin-off of Lockheed Martin makes avionics and telemetry equipment as well as space and wireless components.

L-3, which recently announced a plan to buy Microdyne of Alexandria, Va., for $90 million in cash, plans to issue 3.5 million shares of new stock. Lehman Brothers Inc. and Lockheed Martin Corp. plan to sell 2 million and 3.8 million shares, respectively, reducing their stakes in L-3 to 26 percent and 9.9 percent, respectively.

Based on L-3's closing price Jan. 4, the offering would net about $452 million.
The Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratories will develop a custom, radiation-hardened version of the Pentium processor for use in space and defense through the largesse of Intel Corp.

The microprocessor firm will provide a royalty-free license for its Pentium processor design to Sandia. Radiation hardening will protect the processor from cosmic rays, which can degrade the performance of conventional electronics.

Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said the agreement will save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in microprocessor design costs. It also provides the federal government with a 10-fold increase in processing power over the highest performing existing technology. Sandia is the Energy Department's lead laboratory for microelectronics research and development.

Radiation-hardened chips have been key components in Earth-orbiting satellites, the Galileo mission to Jupiter, missiles and nuclear weapons.
The Domain Name Supporting Organization recently submitted a proposal to ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the Commerce Department-approved organization that will oversee the administration of domain name registrations.

Seeking recognition from ICANN, this group plans to "generally protect and promote the interests" of Internet users as well as distribute information and offer recommendations and policy about top level domains, such as .org and .com, the operation, assignment and management of the domain name system and the relation of trademarks and domain names. According to the organization, the requirements for such a group are defined under Article VI, Section 3(b) of the bylaws of ICANN. The Domain Name Supporting Organization Web site (www.dnso.org) carries a note about a planned meeting on formation of the group set for Jan. 22 in Washington.