Jim Williams, a veteran of some of the government's toughest programs, will be leaving the Homeland Security Department to join the General Services Administration as commissioner of the new Federal Acquisition Service.
I think of them as the shaggy lions of the federal IT industry: men and women who have been in the game long enough to have seen and heard pretty much everything. It's a good idea to pay close attention to what they have to say.
It's no secret that the government IT market is growing faster than others. One result is that systems integrators are deluged with product vendors wanting a piece of that market, according to panelists at a government solutions conference hosted by Gartner Inc. in Orlando, Fla.
Microsoft Corp. has reorganized its government operations so that U.S. federal, state and local and foreign government sales, marketing and consulting are all under one roof in Washington. The Microsoft Government group is headed by Pete Hayes, industry vice president, and employs some 1,000 people. U.S. government people report directly to Hayes; those outside of the United States have a dotted line to him.
