BUSINESS IN BRIEF

Affiliated Computer Services won a four-year, $16 million contract to provide image conversion services to convert the 2000 Census records into the appropriate format for the National Archives. ACS is teamed with the Cerebral Palsy Research Foundation on the contract.

The census information is used to determine social and economic plans and programs on the national, state and county levels.

The cerebral palsy foundation and ACS team were awarded the contract under the Javits-Wagner-O'Day Program, which creates employment opportunities for people who are blind or severely disabled.

ACS will install equipment, train employees and oversee activities at the Cerebral Palsy Research Foundation facilities in Wichita, Kan., and Alexandria, Va. Some film processing work will take place at ACS' Baltimore facility.

The microfilm will then be stored until it is transferred to the National Archives and Census Bureau. Cerebral palsy foundation employees will fulfill 84 percent of jobs created for this contract.The Defense Finance and Accounting Service recently used a reverse auction to buy more than $6 million in IT hardware from Dell, saving the Defense Department's accounting service nearly $2 million.

Using the reverse auction last month, DFAS purchased more than 3,000 desktop PCs, more than 1,000 laptop computers and 600 21-inch monitors from Dell.

In a reverse auction, an agency describes a product or service it wants to buy, and then vendors bid on supplying that product or service. The auction takes place online, and vendors compete for the contract by lowering their prices as they see other offers posted.Dynamics Research was picked by the Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division to develop the naval aviation simulation master plan, aimed at improving training and readiness for air crews in eight combat aircraft models.

The contract, to be performed over the next 10 months, is expected to have funding of $2.75 million.
Halifax has entered into an agreement to provide installation, maintenance and program management services for 1,700 seats at the Virginia Commonwealth University Health System. The company continues to expand its seat management customer base, which presently exceeds 10,000 seats, under management at client locations including the Virginia Department of Transportation, the Virginia Retirement System and the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center in Pennsylvania.The Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development awarded Maximus a two-year, $19 million contract to continue to provide welfare-to-work services in Milwaukee County from Jan. 1, 2002, through Dec. 31, 2003. Under this contract, Maximus will deliver employment and education services to county participants in the Wisconsin Works program.

Program participants receive job counseling and training and educational and other services from the company. Maximus' contract performance will be evaluated on the number of job placements, the retention of jobs at 30 and 180 days from placement, increased wages, health care benefits with placements and customer service surveys.
French defense contractor Thales has tapped Silicon Graphics to supply image generator systems for the Franco-German Tiger helicopter simulator program. Thales' West Sussex, England-based subsidiary, Thales Training & Simulation, is developing the simulators for use in training French and German aircrews to fly Tiger helicopters, which are produced by Eurocopter SA.

Under the $4 million contract, SGI will deliver to Thales Onyx 3000 series visualization systems. These integrated graphics systems process three-dimensional images and geospatial data collected during routine Tiger helicopter training missions. The information will be integrated into full-mission training simulators, which will be delivered to the French and German armed forces beginning in April 2004.

These business briefs are composed of selected excerpts from the BB&T Capital Markets publication, "Aerospace/Defense/Government IT Services Weekly Review," written by Thomas Meagher.