From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Tue Jan 11 15:27:28 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (saic at vision.moundalexis.com) Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 10:27:28 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] SAIC awarded Air Force research laboratory contract for high power microwave program Message-ID: <20050111102705.M488-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 4 Jan 2005, 17:48 GMT SAIC awarded Air Force research laboratory contract for high power microwave program http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=E5343151-5730-4638-B8D2-86418214D1DB --- The Directed Energy Directorate of the Air Force Research Laboratory has awarded a directed energy technology applications and research contract to Science Applications International Corporation's Applied Sciences Operation. The contract, which supports the Air Force's high power microwave (HPM) program, is a five-year, $49.9 million indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity task order intended to develop techniques and approaches for HPM components and systems, as well as other directed energy systems. Under the terms of the contract, the SAIC team will develop new technologies and do applications R&D in pulsed power and HPMs, with a focus on transitioning important non-lethal technologies from the AFRL to end users in the Department of Defense and other federal agencies. Directed energy technology solutions are viewed as important tools for national security, homeland defense, and the global war on terrorism. Dr. Ray O. Johnson, senior vice president and general manager of SAIC's Advanced Concepts Business Unit, said: "SAIC has a strategic interest in the development of high power microwave systems and in transitioning them to support our soldiers in the field." The SAIC team includes 25 subcontractors bringing scientific, engineering, and systems engineering knowledge to AFRL in directed energy. This team also includes 12 small businesses, helping AFRL meet its desire for increased small business participation in high technology programs. The DETAR program will be managed by Charles Gilman, vice president and manager of SAIC's Applied Sciences Operation, out of SAIC's Albuquerque office. The program is expected to support nearly 150 jobs, most of which will be in the Albuquerque area. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Tue Jan 11 15:27:45 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (saic at vision.moundalexis.com) Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 10:27:45 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] SAIC operation awarded contract Message-ID: <20050111102729.T488-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 1/5/05 SAIC operation awarded contract http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2005/01/05/business/news/21_08_431_4_05.txt --- SAN DIEGO (CNS) ---- San Diego-based Science Applications International Corp. announced Monday that its New Mexico-based Applied Sciences Operation was awarded a $49.9 million U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory contract. Under the five-year contract, the SAIC division will develop techniques and approaches for high power microwave components and systems, as well as other directed energy systems.The SAIC team will focus on transitioning nonlethal technologies for the Department of Defense and other federal agencies. SAIC has an office in Rancho Bernardo. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Tue Jan 11 15:28:14 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (saic at vision.moundalexis.com) Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 10:28:14 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] Local firms, employees quick to raise relief funds Message-ID: <20050111102746.H488-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> January 5, 2005 Local firms, employees quick to raise relief funds http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20050105-9999-1b5donate.html --- By Michael Kinsman UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER >From soliciting colleagues to contribute to disaster funds, to companywide programs expected to generate hundreds of thousands of dollars, San Diego companies and their workers have been mobilizing to assist relief efforts after last week's devastating Asian tsunamis. "Something like this happens, and you feel like part of a global community," said Tom Penn, vice president of La Jolla's Ladeki Restaurant Group, a chain of 20 outlets that includes Sammy's California Woodfired Pizza, Roppongi and Prime 10 Steakhouse restaurants. With dozens of San Diego companies working to establish relief efforts, financial contributions to the disaster are certain to surpass $1 million, given the history of companies and their employees assisting victims of the 2003 wildfires in San Diego County and the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. After hearing employees discuss ways to get involved, Penn said the restaurant chain decided to set aside 10 percent of its gross sales on Jan. 18, as well as to create a program for the company to match employee donations. All proceeds will be given to UNICEF. Penn estimated that his 1,000-employee company will generate "in the hundreds of thousands of dollars." "We picked UNICEF because we're very big on kids here," Penn said. "We know that kids were affected in a very big way and that UNICEF is already working in that part of the world, so it seemed to make sense." Sempra Energy, the parent of San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Gas Co., stepped up with one of the largest donations, a $500,000 company grant with an additional $200,000 potential donation if employee contributions reach that amount. "We're still trying to figure out which organization or organizations we will donate to," spokeswoman Jennifer Andrews said. "When things like this happen, we know our 13,000 employees will be looking to our leadership to direct the outreach." Dozens of other local companies were scrambling to develop programs or steer their employees toward reputable relief agencies in the week after the disaster. Still, it was impossible to determine exactly how many businesses, large and small, would be involved. Applied Micro Circuits Corp. set up a $20,000 matching program for its 800 employees, and The San Diego Union-Tribune said it would make a $100,000 donation. "We haven't identified which charity we will make this donation to, but hope to in the next day or so," said Gene Bell, the newspaper's chief executive officer. Other companies, including SAIC, said they were working out details of relief efforts. SAIC, which has operations in Asia, said it plans to provide workers with Internet links to relief charities, offering a matching donation program and some type of in-kind assistance in Asia. Kintera, a San Diego company whose software programs are used by numerous nonprofit agencies for fund raising on the Internet, said 12 clients already have raised more than $60 million. It estimated that consumer contributions on the Internet have surpassed $500 million. "These donations are happening faster and larger than ever in history," said Kintera vice president John Hartman. "The scale and scope of this disaster have something to do with it, but it's also due to the media images we've seen. These are very powerful images for people to see, and they are emotionally impacted by them." Companies often react within days of catastrophes to support relief efforts, and the tsunami disaster was no different. "I knew as soon as I heard the news that we would be doing something," said Kathy Kovacevich, director and community relations manager for the Jack in the Box Foundation. She returned from vacation Monday, finding employee e-mails, voice mails and people stopping by her office to see how the company would respond. The company set up a program to match employee contributions 1-for-1 with a minimum target of a $100,000 donation to the relief fund. "It's encouraging when you see how the workers want to get involved," Kovacevich said. "They knew from our past experience with the fires in San Diego and the 9/11 incidents that we would be involved in some way." At AMCC, the desire to help was immediate. The company operates a 35-employee research and development facility in Bangalore, India. "To the best of our knowledge, none of our employees was hurt in the disaster, but we do feel for that part of the world," said Candace Kilburn, senior vice president of human resources and community relations. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Tue Jan 11 15:29:02 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (saic at vision.moundalexis.com) Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 10:29:02 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] SAIC sells product division Message-ID: <20050111102846.W488-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> Monday, January 10, 2005 SAIC sells product division http://www.sddt.com/News/article.cfm?SourceCode=20050110tlf --- Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) announced it has sold its Content Analyst product division and all related intellectual property to Content Analyst Co., a newly formed company in Reston, Va. The terms of the deal were not disclosed; however, SAIC has retained a minority interest in the new company. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Tue Jan 11 15:28:44 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (saic at vision.moundalexis.com) Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 10:28:44 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] Onstream Media's ASP Solution Will Target Broadcast and Post Production, Media & Entertainment, eLearning, Financial Services and Government Markets Message-ID: <20050111102815.B488-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 11 January 2005 Onstream Media's ASP Solution Will Target Broadcast and Post Production, Media & Entertainment, eLearning, Financial Services and Government Markets http://www.mysan.de/international/article22931.html --- POMPANO BEACH, Fla., Jan. 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Onstream Media Corporation (NASDAQ:ONSM), a business services provider of video and rich media communication, webcasting and digital asset management services formerly known as Visual Data Corporation, and North Plains Systems Corp., (NPS), a leading provider of digital asset management (DAM) solutions, today announced that Onstream Media Corporation will license NPS's TeleScope Application Platform(TM) and when integrated will provide an advanced suite of hosted digital asset management services. The agreement was jointly announced by Hassan Kotob, president and CEO of North Plains Systems, and Randy Selman, president and CEO of Onstream Media Corporation. Onstream Media will integrate North Plains' TeleScope Application Platform(TM) into its digital asset management services platform used by motion picture studios, broadcast and post-production facilities, media and entertainment, financial services, government, healthcare and education to better manage their digital rich media. The solution will enable users to encode, log, index, store, collaborate, transcode, retrieve, and distribute rich media libraries of nearly unlimited size via an IP-based global network. It will be suitable for individual creators, workgroups and enterprise class organizations and is available on a monthly subscription basis. Onstream Media has contracted with Science Applications International Corporation ("SAIC"), a leading IT security firm, to provide the highest level of security, availability and reliability to the Onstream Media Network. Security offerings will include advanced user authentication, permissible user controls, digital rights management, firewalls, VPNs, intrusion detection and network monitoring to support the most demanding customer requirements. The agreement also enables North Plains to offer the Onstream Media ASP service to its existing clients. Companies will have the option of deploying TeleScope Enterprise(TM) as a hosted service to manage their media archives, video libraries and eLearning initiatives on a local, national or global basis. The new ASP service will benefit companies that are looking to reduce the cost of managing their digital assets in house, reducing or eliminating major technology investments and avoiding the need for redundant data management teams. Onstream Media's ASP service will enable greater efficiency in managing digital assets globally, including asset security, transport security, cost effective media transformation, advanced user authentication and integrated workflow. "The delivery of DAM as a managed on-demand service makes a lot of sense for large to medium-sized enterprises," said Michael Moon, CEO of GISTICS and the leading analyst firm that tracks the digital asset management market. "DAM On-Demand preempts the need for end-use organizations to manage the deployment and maintenance costs of 10 or more rapidly evolving media technologies. We estimate that renting rich-media technologies from managed service providers such as OnStream Media will save a global firm $2 to $5 million over a five- year period." Added Moon, "The alliance of North Plains Systems, Onstream Media and SAIC makes the best of all worlds. North Plains brings rock-solid media workflow and repository management technologies. OnStream Media brings a global Web provisioning platform and world-class video DAM services group, consisting of the recently acquired Virage Services Group and Ednet (Entertainment Digital Network). SAIC brings a top-notch professional services group with unmatched capability in DOD-level security, IT capabilities-maturity, and custom development of Web services." "Onstream Media will offer our customers the highest degree of integration with their Telescope installation, and fast implementation times for moving their in-house libraries to a hosted model. This partnership will offer the security and reliability of Onstream Media's global IP network and the proven scale and performance of the TeleScope Application Platform," said Carlos Montalvo Chief Marketing Officer of North Plains. "The selection of North Plains comes after a two-year assessment of leading digital asset management software vendors," said Randy Selman, president and Chief Executive Officer of Onstream Media. "The TeleScope application gives us the scale and performance that our media and enterprise customers demand. Their mature APIs and distributed architecture will allow Onstream Media to rapidly integrate state of the art security, workflow and encoding technologies that are beyond the reach of most installed DAM systems because of cost and complexity." Existing North Plains clients will also benefit from this partnership by tapping into Onstream Media's advanced webcasts and video transport services. Onstream Media provides one of the most advanced webcasting communications solutions, which services over 2,000 clients worldwide. About Onstream Media Corporation Onstream Media is a business services provider that specializes in video and rich media communication, webcasting and digital asset management services. Utilizing processing and distribution software, Onstream Media provides encoding, editing, indexing and querying services. Onstream Media's objectives in this service segment of its business continues to be the building of a fully robust, comprehensive Digital Asset Management (DAM) feature set that virtually any company, government agency or other enterprise having a need to manage rich media content will be able to utilize in an affordable and highly secure environment. For more information, visit the Onstream website at http://www.onstreammedia.com/. About North Plains Systems Corp. Founded in 1994, Nth Plains Systems Corp. is the leading provider of digital asset management software. Its' pioneerinzed by industry analyst Frot and Sullivan, whic honored North Plains with "2EO of the Year" and "200d media and entertainment companies rely on North Plains' TeleScope software and its growing suite of J2EE and JAVA-compatible media management applications. North Plains' Gemini(TM) workflow and automation solution is the industry's first integrated workflow and collaboration application designed specifically to support production, distribution, approval and e-commerce tasks associated with digital asset management and marketing resource management systems. Customers include Boeing, Feld Entertainment, Harcourt, HarperCollins Publishers, International Monetary Fund, Ogilvy and Mather, Publicis Groupe, Thomson Learning, Viacom and Warner Bros. For further information please visit http://www.northplains.com/. About Science Applications International Corporation Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) is the largest employee-owned research and engineering company in the United States, providing information technology, systems integration and eSolutions to commercial and gs and scientists work to solve complex technical problems in national and homeland security, energy, the environment, space, telecommunications, health care an logistics. With annual revenues of $6.7 ion, SAIC and its subsidiaries, including Telcordia Technologies, have more than 45,000 employees at offices in more than 150 cities worldwide. More information about SAIC can be found at http://www.saic.com/. This press release contains forward-looking statements, some of which may relate to Visual Data Corporation, and which involve numerous risks and uncertainties. Actual results, performance or achievements could differ materially from those anticipated in such forward looking statements as a result of certain factors, including those set forth in Visual Data Corporation's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Quelle: Onstream Media Corporation. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Fri Jan 14 22:57:13 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (saic at vision.moundalexis.com) Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2005 17:57:13 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] SAIC sells off content analysis unit Message-ID: <20050114175640.X488-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 01/11/05 SAIC sells off content analysis unit http://www.washingtontechnology.com/news/1_1/daily_news/25318-1.html --- By Roseanne Gerin Staff Writer Science Applications International Corp. sold its content analysis product division and all related intellectual property to Content Analyst Company LLC, the company said yesterday. No financial details were given. The sale includes issued and pending patents on latent semantic indexing, a document indexing method. Content Analyst is a newly formed company based in Reston, Va., in which SAIC holds a minority interest. The company is being funded by a private investment group and has designated SAIC as a reseller and preferred integrator of its products. The new company will further develop the content analysis technology for the commercial market, while continuing to support SAICs federal sales efforts. SAICs content analysis technology has been incorporated into a software product that automates the analysis and categorization of unstructured text and data. It increases the accuracy and speed of finding conceptually relevant information within large volumes of data. SAIC has been developing its content analysis technology for six years and offering it to federal customers. SAIC, a San Diego-based research and engineering company, is No. 5 on Washington Technologys 2004 Top 100 list of federal prime contractors. The company employs approximately 44,000 workers and had revenue of $6.7 billion for the fiscal year ended Jan. 31, 2004. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Fri Jan 14 22:56:39 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (saic at vision.moundalexis.com) Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2005 17:56:39 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] SAIC Sells Content Analyst Product Division Message-ID: <20050114175607.C488-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> Tuesday, January 11, 2005 SAIC Sells Content Analyst Product Division http://www.socaltech.com/story/0001419.html --- San Diego-based SAIC has sold its Content Analyst Product Division to Content Analyst Company LLC, a new company in Reston, Va. The new company is being funded by a private investment group, which is focusing the new company on the commercial potential of Content Analysts's Latent Semantic Indexing technology and patents. SAIC has been offering its tools to federal customers, who use its software for analysis and categorization of unstructured text and data. The software increases the speed and accuracy of discovering conceptually relevant information within large volumes of data, such as in litigatino research, opinion research and electronic publishing. The private investment group was not diclosed, and will hold a minority interest in the new company. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Fri Jan 14 22:59:23 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (saic at vision.moundalexis.com) Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2005 17:59:23 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] New FBI Software May Be Unusable Message-ID: <20050114175715.P488-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> January 13, 2005 New FBI Software May Be Unusable http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-fbi13jan13,0,4698242,print.story --- A central feature of the agency's $581-million computer overhaul aimed at coordinating anti-terrorism efforts is reportedly inadequate. By Richard B. Schmitt Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON A new FBI computer program designed to help agents share information to ward off terrorist attacks may have to be scrapped, the agency has concluded, forcing a further delay in a four-year, half-billion-dollar overhaul of its antiquated computer system. The bureau is so convinced that the software, known as Virtual Case File, will not work as planned that it has taken steps to begin soliciting proposals from outside contractors for new software, officials said. The overhaul of the decrepit computer system was identified as a priority both by the independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks and by members of Congress, who found that the FBI's old system prevented agents from sharing information that could have headed off the attacks. Since the attacks, Congress has given the FBI a blank check, allocating billions of dollars in additional funding. So far the overhaul has cost $581 million, and the software problems are expected to set off a debate over how well the bureau has been spending those dollars. The bureau recently commissioned a series of independent studies to determine whether any part of the Virtual Case File software could be salvaged. Any decision to proceed with new software would add tens of millions of dollars to the development costs and render worthless much of a current $170-million contract. Requests for proposals for new software could be sought this spring, the officials said. The bureau is no longer saying when the project, originally scheduled for completion by the end of 2003, might be finished. FBI officials have scheduled a briefing today to discuss what a spokesman said was the "current status of FBI information technology upgrades." A prototype of the Virtual Case File was delivered to the FBI last month by Science Applications International Corp. of San Diego. But bureau officials consider it inadequate and already outdated, and are using it mainly on a trial basis to glean information from users that will be incorporated in a new design. Science Applications has received about $170 million from the FBI for its work on the project. Sources said about $100 million of that would be essentially lost if the FBI were to scrap the software. "It would be a stunning reversal of progress," Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), the chairman of the Senate appropriations subcommittee that oversees funding for the FBI, said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times this week. "If the software has failed that sets us back a long way. "This has been a fits-and-starts exercise, and a very expensive one for a very long time," he added. "There are very serious questions about whether the FBI is able to keep up with the expanding responsibility and the amount of new dollars that are flowing into it. We have fully funded it at its requested levels." A spokesman for Science Applications, Ron Zollars, said via e-mail that the company had "successfully completed" delivery of the initial version of the Virtual Case File software last month. He declined to comment further. The stripped-down prototype will be running for three months. The bureau plans to then "shut it down, take all the lessons learned and incorporate them in a future case management system," a person familiar with the bureau's plans said. Science Applications will apparently be no part of that future: Its contract expires at the end of March, and there were no plans to renew it, sources said. That the software may have outlived its usefulness even before it has been fully implemented did not surprise some computer experts. An outside computer analyst who has studied the FBI's technology efforts said the agency's problem is that its officials thought they could get it right the first time. "That never happens with anybody," he said. Some sources sympathetic to the FBI defended the process, and said that what has been learned in designing the software has given the bureau valuable design and user information. The replacement software may even be called the Virtual Case File, although it is unlikely to bear much resemblance to the product that is being rolled out to about 300 users testing the prototype in New Orleans and Washington. The prototype's main feature allows users to prepare documents and forward them in a usable form. Eventually, the FBI expects to have software with added features for managing records, evidence and other documents, along with the ability for users to collaborate on documents and share information online. The move is being engineered by Zalmai Azmi, who has been the FBI's chief information officer for the last year. People familiar with his work say Azmi recognizes that the change in direction is likely to generate political heat but that it will serve the bureau better in the long run. The development illustrates the problems in keeping up with rapidly changing technology that confront any business, as well as the changing mission of the FBI since the Sept. 11 attacks, among other issues. Since the attacks, the FBI has rolled out thousands of new computers and set up new secure electronic networks to exchange information, both inside the bureau and with a small number of intelligence agencies. The bureau has also created a database covering millions of documents in the agency's files that are more easily retrievable than before the attacks, and established new systems for managing the overall architecture and budgeting for its computer programs. The overhaul of the computer system was conceived before the Sept. 11 attacks, when the FBI's main job was catching drug dealers and corrupt politicians, rather than weeding out terrorists before they could strike. At least until recently, the bureau's shoe-leather culture never fully embraced cutting-edge technology, leading to rapid turnover in its management ranks. A Government Accountability Office report last year noted that the FBI had gone through five chief information officers in the preceding 24 months. The chief manager of the technology upgrade known as Trilogy quit last year for personal reasons after being lured from private industry two years ago. The effort has also been the subject of a number of critical reports. Last spring, technology experts for the National Research Council found that the Trilogy project failed to reflect the FBI's new emphasis on terrorism prevention and was "not on a path to success." A trade publication, Government Computer News, reported late last month that the Justice Department's inspector general had concluded in a draft report that Virtual Case File would also fail to meet the bureau's needs, and that officials had "no clear timetable or prospect for completing" it. A spokesman for the inspector general's office declined to comment on the draft, as a matter of policy. The FBI has had preliminary discussions with a number of vendors about the possible design of new software. One approach that the bureau is considering is a case-management system that could be used by other agencies, including the departments of Justice and Homeland Security. It is also looking into using off-the-shelf technology as a way to save money. The FBI has retained Aerospace Corp., a nonprofit, federally funded research firm in El Segundo, to conduct an independent evaluation of Virtual Case File. It has also hired BAE Systems, a British defense contractor, to identify and evaluate the specific needs and requirements for any permanent system. The companies' reports are due later this month. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Fri Jan 14 23:00:16 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (saic at vision.moundalexis.com) Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2005 18:00:16 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] Problems revealed in FBI's software Message-ID: <20050114175924.E488-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> January 14, 2005 Problems revealed in FBI's software http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20050114-9999-1n14fbi.html --- S.D.-made key part could get scrapped By Bruce V. Bigelow UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER January 14, 2005 The FBI said yesterday that it might scrap a $170 million software program developed as a crucial element in a high-performance computer system required for the bureau to meet the threat of terrorism. The customized software, which was intended to help FBI agents and analysts track terrorists and manage criminal investigations, was developed by SAIC, the San Diego defense contractor. But the system's capabilities were only about 10 percent of what was sought, a senior FBI official told reporters yesterday in Washington, D.C. The official who conducted the background briefing required anonymity as a condition for attending the session. A spokesman for SAIC, also known as Science Applications International Corp., said the company had met its contract requirements with the FBI. The company plans to await the findings of an independent assessment of the problems, which the FBI commissioned for $2 million, before commenting further. The FBI said it hopes to salvage some aspects of SAIC's specialized computer program, known as Virtual Case File, perhaps by using off-the-shelf software available from commercial vendors. It's possible that a new program will have to be developed from scratch, the FBI official acknowledged yesterday. "I am frustrated by the delays," FBI Director Robert Mueller said yesterday in Birmingham, Ala. "I am frustrated that we do not have on every agent's desk the capability of a modern case-management system." SAIC developed the customized software under a 2001 contract intended to replace a hodgepodge of antiquated computers and paper files with a sophisticated computer network. Overhauling the agency's outdated computer system was identified as a priority by the independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Congressional investigations also concluded that a high-speed network linking FBI field offices might have helped prevent the attacks by enabling agents to share disparate information. "The FBI cannot share information and manage their cases effectively without a top-flight computer system," said Lee H. Hamilton, vice chairman of the 9/11 panel. "We on the commission got assurances again and again from the FBI that they were getting on top of this problem. It's very, very disappointing to see that they're not." Problems with the software were only the latest development in a three-part program, known as Trilogy, that has run up an overall price tag of nearly $600 million since the contracts were awarded in 2001. The National Research Council issued a scathing report about the system's shortcomings in May. It concluded that the FBI should start over. Trilogy was intended to overhaul the FBI's aging computers with a secure, high-speed network that called for installing 500 computer network servers, 1,600 scanners and thousands of desktop computers in FBI field offices. The government awarded contracts to install the network and computer hardware to DynCorp of Reston, Va. Computer Sciences Corp., based in El Segundo, took over the work after it acquired DynCorp in 2003. The Senate Appropriations Committee sought unsuccessfully in November to cap the cost of Trilogy at $600 million, noting that the project has been plagued by cost overruns, delays, management turnover and other technical problems. Years of mounting criticism, however, might only serve to focus congressional ire on the final Trilogy component the software delivered by SAIC. "The FBI's long-anticipated Virtual Case File has been a train wreck in slow motion," Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, said in a statement yesterday. Both Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the FBI pegged the cost of the software at $170 million. But SAIC spokesman Jared Adams said yesterday that the cost of the Virtual Case File software was closer to $130 million. "We delivered the original operational capability for the Virtual Case File system to the FBI at the end of December, as contractually agreed upon," Adams said. The SAIC spokesman declined to address the FBI's comments about scrapping the software. Adams said SAIC was awaiting the findings of an independent assessment being done for the FBI by Aerospace Corp. and BAE Systems. Leahy also took note of recent press reports that the Justice Department approached other computer contractors in August for their recommendations on replacing SAIC's Virtual Case File software. "Over the past several months, many of us have pressed the FBI for realistic assessments about VCF's cost, capabilities and operational date," Leahy said. "As recently as last May, the FBI was still claiming that VCF would be completed by the end of 2004, and that it would at last give the FBI the 'cutting-edge technology' it needs. Now we learn that the FBI began to explore new options last August, because it feared that VCF was going to fail." The Vermont senator added that Congress had taken the additional step of asking for an independent investigation of the matter by the Government Accountability Office. The Associated Press, Reuters and the New York Times News Service contributed to this report. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Sun Jan 16 13:09:59 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (saic at vision.moundalexis.com) Date: Sun, 16 Jan 2005 08:09:59 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] SAIC rejects Trilogy criticism Message-ID: <20050116080930.R488-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 01/14/05 SAIC rejects Trilogy criticism http://www.washingtontechnology.com/news/1_1/daily_news/25335-1.html --- By Roseanne Gerin Staff Writer Science Applications International Corp. today rejected criticism that it botched a $170 million IT upgrade project with the FBI, saying the company has performed well and that the FBI is partly to blame for problems. The FBI is considering abandoning the Virtual Case File system, awarded to SAIC in 2001, due to missed deadlines, cost overruns and program snafus. The project is part of the FBIs Trilogy program to modernize its IT systems. The law enforcement agency will make a final decision after Aerospace Corp., an El Segundo, Calif., company that specializes in technical research and development for space programs, conducts an evaluation of the system. The FBI modernization effort involved a massive technological and cultural change agency-wide, said Duane Andrews, SAICs chief operating officer. Unfortunately, implementing this change on the Trilogy contract has been difficult to do without impacts to cost and schedule. To add to that complexity, in the time that SAIC has been working on the Trilogy project, the FBI has had four different CIOs and 14 different managers. Establishing and setting system requirements in this environment has been incredibly challenging. The FBI switched the focus of the project and changed the systems requirements, SAIC said. For instance, the Virtual Case File originally was intended to support the FBIs criminal case management, but the agency broadened its focus after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks from criminal investigation and prosecution to one that included terrorist investigation and deterrence, the company said. This change in focus prompted changes in the Virtual Case Files requirements, the company said. SAICs Andrews statement was prompted by recent criticism by lawmakers following a report in Government Computer News about the program. A draft report from Justice Departments inspector general said the FBI is planning to start a new case-management initiative called the Federal Investigative Case Management System to replace Virtual Case File. Government Computer News is owned by PostNewsweek Tech Media, which also owns Washington Technology. The Virtual Case File was designed to provide FBI agents with quick information-sharing capabilities and instant access to case-management databases. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Sun Jan 16 13:10:52 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (saic at vision.moundalexis.com) Date: Sun, 16 Jan 2005 08:10:52 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] SAIC shares gain 6.3 percent Message-ID: <20050116081001.N488-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> January 15, 2005 SAIC shares gain 6.3 percent http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20050115-9999-1b15calbrfs.html --- UNION-TRIBUNE San Diego-based SAIC said its board of directors set the price of the company's shares at $40.55, a gain of $2.41, or 6.3 percent, from the previous price of $38.14. The employee-owned research and engineering conglomerate is one of the few companies in America to control the price of its own stock, which only trades internally. An SAIC spokesman said Telcordia employees will be permitted to keep their SAIC shares they directly own for five years after SAIC completes the sale of its New Jersey telecommunications subsidiary. The $1.35 billion deal is expected to close next month. Telcordia employees who own SAIC shares through their 401(k) plan will be allowed to held them for one year. Telcordia has more than 3,000 employees. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Sun Jan 16 13:12:20 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (saic at vision.moundalexis.com) Date: Sun, 16 Jan 2005 08:12:20 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] SAIC Delivers Virtually Worthless Software to FBI Message-ID: <20050116081053.T488-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 01/16/04 SAIC Delivers Virtually Worthless Software to FBI http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=46&contentid=1797 --- SAIC Delivers Virtually Worthless Software to FBI by URI DOWBENKO SAIC Delivers Virtually Worthless Software to FBI Where is Bill Hamilton and the PROMIS software when you need them? The Inspector General of the Department of Justice has concluded that the new computer program made by SAIC (Science Applications International) for the FBI at a cost of $170 million is a complete flop. The case management computer project, called Virtual Case File, has been judged virtually worthless, according to Washington Technology Magazine (Jan 10,2005). The IG report, dated Dec 20, states that "the current VCF (Virtual Case File) application will not meet the FBI's needs." When the FBI took delivery of the the new system from SAIC in San Diego, the report stated that FBI officials "consider it inadequate and already outdated, and are using it mainly on a trial basis to glean information from users that will be incorporated in a new design," The new system was supposed to be part of the FBI's modernization of "Trilogy," the FBI's equally useless current computer system. Supposedly it would allow all FBI offices to search for and access case files and related documents, a prime selling point of the PROMIS software made by Bill Hamilton's company INSLAW in the 1970s for the Department of Justice. More than $170 million of taxpayers' money has been squandered by the FBI to date on the failed VCF system. Why doesn't the Department of Justice just use the PROMIS software it stole from Bill Hamilton more than 30 years ago? (See House Report 102-857, "The Inslaw Affair -- Investigative Report by the Committee on the Judiciary."(Sep. 10, 1992) The answer: Republican Party donors like SAIC can't make any money on old corporate-government frauds. SAIC needs new revenue streams -- and new taxpayer dollars are the obvious deep pockets. You don't "miss" that $170 million, do you? -- * URI DOWBENKO is a media analyst and the author of "Hoodwinked: Watching Movies With Eyes Wide Open" and "Bushwhacked: Inside Stories of True Conspiracy." His website is UriDowbenko.com For more information on Dowbenko's books Bushwhacked & Hoodwinked" From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Sun Jan 16 13:13:06 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (saic at vision.moundalexis.com) Date: Sun, 16 Jan 2005 08:13:06 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] SAIC expands space in Harford County Message-ID: <20050116081221.S488-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> Originally published January 16, 2005 SAIC expands space in Harford County http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/harford/bal-ha.week16jan16,1,6536566.story?coll=bal-local-harford&ctrack=1&cset=true --- Science Applications International Corp. in Abingdon was recently awarded a Department of Defense contract to provide chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear protection capability to 200 military installations. SAIC has leased an additional 70,000 square feet of warehouse space in the Lakeside Business Park and hired more than 150 employees as it gears up to perform the work, county officials said. "SAIC is helping the Army do its job to help protect our nation and the world. We appreciate the contribution great firms such as SAIC make to our homeland defense effort and the positive impact they have in our community," said Harford County Executive James M. Harkins. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Sun Jan 16 13:17:27 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (saic at vision.moundalexis.com) Date: Sun, 16 Jan 2005 08:17:27 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] A Failing Upgrade for the FBI Message-ID: <20050116081442.J488-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> Friday, January 14, 2005; 10:08 AM A Failing Upgrade for the FBI http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9063-2005Jan14.html --- By Cynthia L. Webb washingtonpost.com Staff Writer Friday, January 14, 2005; 10:08 AM This is not a way to endear yourself to taxpayers or critics: The Federal Bureau of Investigation may have to nix a $170 million revamp of its outdated computer systems, an upgrade that was designed to boost information-sharing capabilities and cobble together a clearer picture of the terrorism threat. The likely collapse of the "Virtual Case File" project, part of a $500 million IT upgrade effort at the FBI, was detailed by a number of media outlets today and first reported yesterday by the Los Angeles Times. It's a major blow for the agency, which has been struggling to redeem its image since Sept. 11, 2001. After the terrorist attacks, the FBI was portrayed as a technology dinosaur, with reports of agents working without e-mail access and in many cases, without computers. The development is a "train wreck in slow motion, at a cost of $170 million to American taxpayers and unknown cost to public safety," Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, told the Wall Street Journal. The all-but-doomed program, which has relied on expensive customized software, "has been riddled with technical and planning problems, FBI officials said on Thursday," the New York Times wrote today, also noting financial problems and "perhaps most critically, a resistance among some veteran agents who favor pens and pads over computers." The paper said the bureau has paid $2 million to a research firm to study the glitches and try to salvage the program. Aerospace Corp. has been hired "to look into how much of the software can be salvaged and which additional programs are needed, a government official said," the Journal reported today. "The development is a major setback for the FBI in a decade-long struggle to escape a paper-driven culture and replace antiquated computer systems that have hobbled counterterrorism and criminal investigations. Robert S. Mueller III, the bureau's director, along with members of the Sept. 11 commission and other national security experts, have said the success of that effort is critical to domestic security," the New York Times said. Lee H. Hamilton, vice chairman of the Sept. 11 commission -- which had pinpointed an IT overhaul at the bureau as a priority after the attacks -- didn't mince words. "The FBI cannot share information and manage their cases effectively without a top-flight computer system, and we on the commission got assurances again and again from the FBI that they were getting on top of this problem. It's very, very disappointing to see that they're not." More admonishment from another commission member: "Jamie S. Gorelick, a member of the independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks, called the development 'a tremendous setback.' She said the bureau 'cannot function effectively if it does not have a way to effectively get its own information.' She said that Mueller wants a good computer system and had testified to the commission that it was within reach," The Washington Post wrote, reporting that the computer system "will be largely abandoned before it is launched." It looks like more taxpayer money will be spent on the bureau's revamping plan. "A top FBI official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity in a background briefing, said the bureau 'presumably' would ask Congress for millions of dollars more to seek bids from companies to develop another automated information-sharing system," USA Today reported. Darts for Contractor The revelation that the computer overhaul may be dead in the water is not good news for San Diego-based SAIC, which got the contract in 2001. The Times explained more: "The FBI's 'virtual case file' system, the last in a three-part computer upgrade totaling more than half a billion dollars, has proved the most difficult. The system was designed to give the bureau's nearly 12,000 agents around the country instant access to FBI databases, allowing speedier investigations and better integration of information both within the bureau and with other intelligence agencies that must coordinate national security matters. But the project is over budget and behind schedule, and FBI officials acknowledged on Thursday that they were uncertain whether it would ever be completed. Only about 10 percent of the project ... is now in use, officials said." The bureau could lose $130 million of the $170 million it paid SAIC if the program ends, the Journal reported. The Post explained the VCF software was envisioned to enable agents "to share files electronically and search easily for links between cases that might not otherwise seem connected. Such capability might have enabled agents to more closely link men who later turned out to be involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to intelligence reviews conducted after the terrorist strikes." SAIC is playing it cool -- a company spokesman said it "had met its contract requirements with the FBI" -- but don't expect this to be the last word. "The company plans to await the findings of an independent assessment of the problems, which the FBI commissioned for $2 million, before commenting further," the San Diego Union-Tribune reported. Yesterday's Los Angeles Times article said SAIC turned in a VCF prototype. "The stripped-down prototype will be running for three months. The bureau plans to then 'shut it down, take all the lessons learned and incorporate them in a future case management system,' a person familiar with the bureau's plans said. Science Applications will apparently be no part of that future: Its contract expires at the end of March, and there were no plans to renew it, sources said." A follow-up article today explains what the FBI planned for the software. "The FBI wanted the Virtual Case File software to be built from scratch to maximize the safety and security of information. But the custom design proved extraordinarily expensive, and over the years software companies have been able to develop comparable off-the-shelf software for a fraction of the cost," the paper said. "A preliminary report from Aerospace Corp., a federally funded nonprofit research firm in El Segundo hired by the FBI to assess its options, has identified commercially available programs that could meet the FBI's requirements, sources familiar with the study said. Using such programs would also enable the FBI to integrate its software with that of other agencies doing similar work a far more complicated task if it chose to stick with a custom product." From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Mon Jan 17 20:13:40 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (saic at vision.moundalexis.com) Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2005 15:13:40 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] FBI Not Getting Results In File-Sharing Project Message-ID: <20050117151145.J488-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> Jan. 17, 2005 FBI Not Getting Results In File-Sharing Project http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=57701482&tid=5979 --- Three years after starting, FBI is calling in outsiders to re-evaluate its approach By Larry Greenemeier InformationWeek The FBI is exploring whether a 3-year-old project that's critical to its massive technology upgrade effort should be abandoned. At issue is whether the Virtual Case File system, the $170 million centerpiece of the third phase of its Trilogy project technology upgrade, will provide the security and overall efficiency required to make it usable. "There were inadequacies," an FBI spokesman says. Virtual Case File, originally scheduled for deployment in December 2003, has been plagued by problems as the FBI's information-sharing needs have evolved over the past few years. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, an inability to share information was highlighted as a weakness in the FBI and other agencies. The contractor, Science Applications International Corp., doesn't accept all the blame for the problems. "The FBI modernization effort involved a massive technological and cultural change, agencywide," Duane Andrews, SAIC chief operating officer, said in a statement. "... All parties involved have made mistakes in the way the Trilogy program was handled in the past." SAIC said it delivered--and the FBI accepted--the first installment of the virtual file system in December, in what it calls a change in FBI strategy to do the project in a "less risky, incremental, phased-in" deployment rather than all at once. SAIC said the FBI has had four different CIOs during the life of Trilogy, and 14 different managers on the project that began in 2001, making it "incredibly challenging" to set system requirements. The agency now will pay the advisory firm Aerospace Corp. to investigate whether the Virtual Case File project can be salvaged. The FBI says in a document highlighting recent technology improvements that "the pace of technological innovation has overtaken our original vision for VCF, and there are now existing products to suit our purposes that did not exist when Trilogy began." Aerospace will evaluate the project as well as off-the-shelf software and applications designed by other federal agencies to determine how the FBI can best move forward with plans to give agents the ability to better share case-file information. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Mon Jan 17 20:16:54 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (saic at vision.moundalexis.com) Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2005 15:16:54 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] SAIC and the Justice Department Message-ID: <20050117151355.M488-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> January 16, 2005 SAIC and the Justice Department http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/05/01/con05016.html --- A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION by Matt Carmody You just can't make this stuff up. The company that recently took $170 million taxpayer dollars to upgrade the FBI's computer systems and then didn't deliver as promised was a weird choice for the contract in the first place. SAIC has extensive government contracts, yet the company's history with the very agency it was to provide computer services to should have set off some alarms. Here is what Lynn Landes wrote about SAIC at Dissidentvoice.com on August 19, 2003: "The federal government, its main customer, often doesn't want the public to know what the company [SAIC] is doing and, as one of the nation's largest employee-owned corporations, it escapes investor scrutiny," writes AP correspondent Elliot Spagat, in a July 26, 2003 article. J. Robert Beyster founded SAIC on February 3, 1969, "with a couple of consulting contracts, one from Los Alamos and one from Brookhaven National Labs," according to the SAIC website. Today, SAIC has racked up more than $5.9 billion in annual revenues. Bev Harris and her investigative team have dug up some interesting facts about SAIC. It seems that SAIC has had its share of legal troubles. In a 1995 article in the Web Review, editor Stephen Pizzo paints a disturbing picture of SAIC. "In 1990 SAIC was indicted by the Justice Department on 10 felony counts for fraud in its management of a Superfund toxic cleanup site. (SAIC pleaded guilty.) In 1993 the Justice Department sued SAIC, accusing it of civil fraud on an F15 fighter contract. In May 1995, the same month SAIC purchased NSI (Network Solutions Inc.), the company settled a suit that charged it had lied about security system tests it conducted for a Treasury Department currency plant in Fort Worth, TX. "Is it just me or does this relationship stink from the beginning? It's kind of like the Good Housekeeping column, "Can this marriage be saved?" only more tawdry. For further proof of the overall weirdness of the choice of this company to do the needed work for DoJ consider this: SAIC is the company that is supposed to vet Diebold's election machines country-wide. We all know how well that went on 2 November and we will have ample time to remember it during the next four years. Perhaps most telling in the choice of this company for the contract with DoJ is the pedigree it carries. It's probably no coincidence that the company is privately owned and, therefore, not required to disclose its particulars to the SEC. With a group like the following collecting company paychecks I would shy away from the glare of disclosure too. Here, again, from the Landes article: Recently, SAIC got the contract to assist other corporations, including Northrop Grumman, in training of the Iraqi Army. The specter of corporations, littered with ex-CIA types, that both control the voting systems and train the armies of countries around the world, is an emerging and frightening reality. "Currently on SAIC's board is ex-CIA director Bobby Ray Inman, director of the National Security Agency, deputy director of the CIA, and vice director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. According to the OC (*Orange County) Weekly, "Inman worked at the highest levels of American intelligence during an era (President Ronald Reagan) when it displayed a stunning lack of it. Inman's achievements include: failing to predict the peaceful collapse of the Soviet Union; prolonging violent, useless civil wars in Central America; and giving arms to terrorists in exchange for hostages (Iran Contra)." "During the Bush administration, Inman, Perry and Deutch - while directors of Science Applications (SAIC), were also members of the National Foreign Intelligence Board (NFIB), an advisory group reporting to the President and the director of Central Intelligence, which deals with production, review and coordination of foreign intelligence," reports the Crypt. Both Inman and Deutch were former Directors of the CIA. William J. Perry was also a former Secretary of Defense during the Clinton Administration. SAIC proudly lists DARPA in its annual report as one of its prime clients. DARPA is the controversial Department of Defense (DOD) subsidiary, which until recently employed Admiral John Poindexter of Iran-Contra fame. Poindexter was forced to resign when it was revealed that DARPA was prepared to trade "futures" in terrorist attacks. DARPA has also developed a program to spy on American citizens, which has civil libertarians in an uproar. And, silly me, I actually thought that there was a chance of unseating the emperor on 2 November. Matt Carmody Washingtonville, NY A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Mon Jan 17 20:18:42 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (saic at vision.moundalexis.com) Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2005 15:18:42 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] FBI may scrap $170 million project Message-ID: <20050117151752.L488-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> Friday, January 14, 2005 Posted: 0223 GMT (1023 HKT) FBI may scrap $170 million project http://edition.cnn.com/2005/US/01/13/fbi.software/ --- Leahy: The program is 'a train wreck in slow motion' >From Terry Frieden CNN Washington Bureau WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A top FBI official said Thursday the bureau may have to scrap a computer program that so far has cost $170 million and was intended to be an important tool in fighting terrorism. Bureau officials told a news briefing that they expect to find that after four years in development their much-touted Virtual Case File system does not work. But they said a suitable replacement is commercially available. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the project is being reviewed by the Justice Department, The Associated Press reported. FBI Director Robert Mueller, who was in Birmingham, Alabama, Thursday, said he was "frustrated by the delays." "I am frustrated that we do not have on every agent's desk the capability of a modern case management system," Mueller said. "At the same time, we have made substantial changes in the way we handle information information technology within the FBI." Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, called the program "a train wreck in slow motion." Leahy noted that the FBI said last May the Virtual Case File system would be completed by the end of 2004. "Now we learn that the FBI began to explore new options last August, because it feared that VCF was going to fail," Leahy said in a press release. "Bringing the FBI's information technology into the 21st century should not be rocket science." He said that getting straight answers from the Justice Department and the FBI "has been so difficult that we had to take the step of asking for an independent investigation by the Government Accountability Office." Speed information sharing Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the FBI and contractor Science Applications International Corp. have been racing to complete the project, which is intended to speed the rapid sharing of information. "It's like changing the wheels on a car going 70 miles an hour," the senior FBI official told reporters. "We're mission-oriented. We have no down time." The official acknowledged the seriousness of the flaws, but insisted the problems have had no major impact on the FBI's counterterrorism efforts. "All the information is getting there. It's just that we're doing it the hard way," the official said. Counterterrorism information collected by agents through interviews and surveillance currently becomes available only after it is uploaded nightly into a system accessible to the nation's intelligence community. The current program requires FBI personnel to manually enter, print, sign and scan their information into the "investigative data warehouse." Counterterrorism information collected by agents gets top priority and is entered into the system within 24 hours. Information dealing with such matters as violent crime, organized crime, fraud and other white-collar crime may take days to be shared throughout the law enforcement community, the officials said. The new software program was supposed to allow agents to pass along along intelligence and criminal information in real time. The FBI expects to learn within weeks whether it will have to scrap the system, a scenario the officials said was likely. Before making that decision, the FBI is awaiting a final report by an independent consultant, Aerospace Corp., hired to review the state of the the software project and analyze what is available commercially. FBI officials indicated they expect to get the consultant's conclusion by the end of the month. They predicted that at least $130 million of the $170 million project could be lost. Field test Meanwhile, the FBI's New Orleans field office has launched a three-month pilot project to determine whether about 10 percent of the Virtual Case File system development can be salvaged. The office will run a prototype of the system that SAIC delivered to the FBI in December after missing previous deadlines. "We delivered the initial operational capability of the FBI's virtual case file system as contractually agreed upon, at the end of December," said SAIC spokesman Jared Adams. The senior FBI official said he would withhold a verdict on whether any portion of the software could be incorporated into a successor system until the trial's conclusion. Top FBI officials cited a wide range of reasons for the software-development problems. The rapidly changing state of technology was insufficiently understood, and an entire system was developed to replace the antiquated FBI computer and record management systems. One official said that "next time" the FBI would seek a modular system in which capabilities can be added or changed to the existing structure. The FBI said the changed mission of the bureau following the September 11 attacks added a burden to the case-file system developers, who launched the complex project upgrade in 2000. FBI officials say they are awaiting a review on the status of the agency's major technology projects, which together are costing more than $500 million. The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, is working on a broad review of the FBI technology upgrades, including the troubled project. Key FBI officials were scheduled to meet Thursday with the Justice Department inspector general and separately with lawmakers to discuss the developments. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Tue Jan 18 13:52:22 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (saic at vision.moundalexis.com) Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2005 08:52:22 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] NEWS BRIEF: SAIC overexposed to Uncle Sam Message-ID: <20050118085153.E488-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 17 January, 2005 NEWS BRIEF: SAIC overexposed to Uncle Sam http://www.integratedmar.com/ecl-usa/briefs.cfm?item=11975 --- Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) posted 3Q04 (fiscal 3Q05) revenue of $2,061 million, up 17.7% from 3Q03 revenue of $1,751 million. Revenue grew 4.0% sequentially from $1,982 million in 2Q04. SAIC's 3Q04 operating income of $170 million was unchanged from 3Q03. The company attributes the drop in operating margin to increased losses recognized on SAIC's fixed-price contract with the Greek government and a non-cash curtailment gain of $16 million in 3Q03. On Nov. 17, 2004, SAIC signed a definitive agreement to sell the company's subsidiary, Telcordia Technologies, for $1.35 billion in cash. The sale is expected to be completed in February. According to Technology Business Research, SAIC is overexposed to the U.S. federal government, whose budget deficit reached a record high of 5.7% of GDP, equivalent to $670 billion that will be borrowed from the rest of the world. Eventually this spending must slow, which will negatively affect companies like SAIC, Computer Sciences Corp. and BearingPoint. TBR feels SAIC should focus on expanding revenue from its commercial business. We also feel SAIC relies too heavily upon revenue from the United States. TBR estimates the North American market accounts for between 43% and 47% of IT spending worldwide; yet, more than 97% of SAIC's revenue comes from the United States. TBR feels the company must take steps to increase sales from non-U.S. markets if it is to be globally competitive. 3Q04 net income was $95.0 million, down 18.1% year-to-year from $116.0 million in 3Q03. Non-operating expenses rose due to investment losses of $11 million in 3Q04 versus a net gain of $20 million in 3Q03 on the sale of investments. For the full report, visit www.tbri.com From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Tue Jan 18 13:53:08 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (saic at vision.moundalexis.com) Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2005 08:53:08 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] FBI's $243m security program doomed Message-ID: <20050118085225.P488-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 18.01.05 FBI's $243m security program doomed http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=3&ObjectID=10006943 --- The FBI may have to scrap a new US$170 million ($243 million) computer program designed to allow its agents to share information instantly and fix a main problem identified after the September 11 attacks. The software was already outdated and inadequate and the bureau was able to use only about 10 per cent of the program, an FBI official said on condition of anonymity. Failure of the Virtual Case File software is the latest glitch in the bureau's effort to overhaul its computer system, one of director Robert Mueller's priorities in the agency's reorganisation after September 11, 2001. "I am frustrated," Mueller said when asked about the software at a news conference in Birmingham, Alabama. "There were problems we did not anticipate." Investigations showed the FBI and other intelligence agencies failed to share information that could have helped stop the hijackers from crashing four aeroplanes into the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field. The FBI was criticised for its old system of keeping paper files that could not be accessed by agents in the field. The official said part of the problem was that the agency was trying to revamp an antiquated system all at once. In the future, changes should be done in stages, so software would not be outdated by the time it was launched. "I compare the FBI to changing wheels on a car that is going at 70 miles an hour," the official said. Though Mueller said the bureau was trying to salvage the software, the official said there was a "good possibility" the FBI would need a new system, which would mean most of the US$170 million was wasted. The FBI has suffered from its old case management system, which prevented timely sharing of information. September 11 investigators made an example of a July 10, 2001, memo from an FBI agent in Phoenix outlining concerns that an effort was under way by Osama bin Laden to send students to the United States for flight training. The memo was sent to FBI headquarters but never acted on. The FBI has had several failed attempts to revamp its computer system. In the past few years it has bought new computers and hardware but was waiting for the software to provide an efficient way to manage, store and share data. Although the bureau has gone through the cumbersome task of scanning all of its paper files related to counter-terrorism and downloaded it into a computer database that can be accessed by agents, it does not yet have a system that allows agents to directly input complete reports electronically. Virtual Case File was meant to help do that and more. But the version of the software that has been created is lacking in many respects, the official said. It could not properly manage records or documents or create the proper security access control. The official said the Virtual Case File software was commissioned from Science Applications International of San Diego in 2001 but was delayed repeatedly before being delivered last month. The FBI is now doing a pilot on the small portion of the software that does seem to work - one that will allow agents to create case files on a computer instead of on paper. An independent study should determine this month if any part of the software can be salvaged. - REUTERS From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Tue Jan 18 13:53:56 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (saic at vision.moundalexis.com) Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2005 08:53:56 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] Jacobs Part of SAIC Team Selected to Receive Engineering Contract from Edgewood Chemical Biological Command Message-ID: <20050118085310.Y488-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> January 18, 2005 07:45 AM US Eastern Timezone Jacobs Part of SAIC Team Selected to Receive Engineering Contract from Edgewood Chemical Biological Command http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20050118005223&newsLang=en ---- PASADENA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 18, 2005--Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. (NYSE:JEC) announced today that it is a member of the winning Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) team selected to receive an engineering services contract from the Engineering Command of the Edgewood Chemical Biological Command (ECBC), Department of the Army. The SAIC team is one of four selected for this 5-year, $100-million contract. The contract provides the ECBC with engineering services, acquisition planning, and training support in the areas of chemical and biological defense research, process and systems development, data management and testing, and domestic preparedness and emergency response. Jacobs has provided full-service engineering and design services to the Department of the Army for over 50 years. In making the announcement, Jacobs Group Vice President Michael Higgins stated, "We are proud of our long and successful history of providing professional engineering services to the Army. We look forward to providing engineering design support on this important homeland security contract." Jacobs, with over 35,000 employees and revenues approaching $5.0 billion, provides technical, professional, and construction services globally. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Wed Jan 19 03:37:15 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (saic at vision.moundalexis.com) Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2005 22:37:15 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] NASA Announces Financial Management Contract Modification Message-ID: <20050118223620.B488-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> Jan. 18, 2005 NASA Announces Financial Management Contract Modification http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2005/jan/HQ_c05b_ifmp.html --- NASA has implemented a $48 million contract modification with Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) of San Diego. It broadens SAIC responsibility to provide integrated financial management support under the "Unified NASA Information Technology Services (UNITeS)" contract. The $48,095,090 contract modification provides the NASA Integrated Financial Management Program (IFMP) with expanded services, including operational and network infrastructure support. SAIC also will develop module-based software enabling NASA to add or remove interchangeable tools and systems to the program. SAIC will provide additional information technology (IT) systems support to NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), Huntsville, Ala., which provides IT support to the IFM Program. The modification provides additional support through Dec. 31, 2008, if the agency exercises both contract options. With this modification, the value of the contract, including options, is approximately $883 million. The UNITeS contact was awarded to SAIC on Jan. 1, 2004. The IFMP combines agency financial resources and travel office information. MSFC responsibilities include managing software applications, Web/computer server systems, audiovisual information, telecommunications, information technology security, IT procurement, documentation storage and protection hardware maintenance. Support provided under the UNITeS contract includes NASA-wide IT security, encryption security systems, computer networking, digital imaging and IT support at NASA's facility in Moscow. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Thu Jan 20 01:05:52 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (saic at vision.moundalexis.com) Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2005 20:05:52 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] Robert Wray Joins SAIC's Naval and Maritime Systems Business Unit Message-ID: <20050119200504.W488-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> MIDDLETOWN, R.I., Jan. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) today announced that Robert O. Wray has joined SAIC as operations manager of SAIC-Middletown, a division of the company's Naval and Maritime Systems Business Unit. Wray brings to SAIC more than 25 years of experience in management and engineering. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering. As a captain in the U.S. Navy reserve, Wray spent nearly four months in Baghdad prior to joining SAIC. He was security officer for the Navy's Project and Contracting Office at the U.S. Embassy, which was tasked with implementing an $18 billion reconstruction effort for Iraq. Early in his career, Wray was a nuclear-trained surface warfare officer in the U.S. Navy and a partner in small business enterprises. During the 1990s, he owned an electrical equipment manufacturing company, and stayed on as vice president of business development after selling the company to Pace Global Energy Services, based in Washington, D.C. SAIC-Middletown is formerly Aquidneck Management Associates, Ltd. (AMA), a Rhode Island-based provider of professional services to defense and state customers. AMA, Ltd. was acquired by SAIC in February 2004. With the retirement of AMA President Glenn MacNaught and vice president Roger Nolan, Wray now leads a staff of almost 300 professionals who provide products and services in the areas of undersea warfare technology development, program management, systems engineering and information technology solutions. "We want to remain true to the company's local roots while taking advantage of SAIC's breadth and depth to grow the company," said Wray. "The goal of transforming, growing and evolving the company can be realized through a process that maintains the established business base with the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, re-tools the workforce to provide technical capabilities to the Navy community and captures growth markets in the northeast." SAIC is the largest employee-owned research and engineering company in the United States, providing information technology, systems integration and eSolutions to commercial and government customers. SAIC engineers and scientists work to solve complex technical problems in national and homeland security, energy, the environment, space, telecommunications, health care, and logistics. With annual revenues of nearly $7 billion, SAIC and its subsidiaries, including Telcordia Technologies, have more than 45,000 employees at offices in more than 150 cities worldwide. More information about SAIC can be found at http://www.saic.com/. Statements in this announcement other than historical data and information constitute forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. A number of factors could cause our actual results, performance, achievements or industry results to be very different from the results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Some of these factors include, but are not limited to, the risk factors set forth in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the period ended January 31, 2004, and such other filings that the Company makes with the SEC from time to time. Due to such uncertainties and risks, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. Quelle: SAIC From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Tue Jan 25 02:45:35 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (saic at vision.moundalexis.com) Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2005 21:45:35 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] Sensors Everywhere Message-ID: <20050124214023.F488-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> Jan. 24, 2005 Sensors Everywhere http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=57702816&tid=5978 --- A 'bucket brigade' of tiny, wirelessly networked sensors someday may be able to track anything, anytime, anywhere By Aaron Ricadela, InformationWeek Jan. 24, 2005 Some big companies are trying to make the world--and almost everything in it--smarter. Science Applications International Corp., the big government IT contractor known as SAIC, is developing technology for the Defense and Homeland Security departments that could use hundreds of tiny, wireless sensors packed with computing power to help secure U.S. borders, bridges, power plants, and ships by detecting suspicious movements or dangerous cargo and radioing warnings back to a command center. BP plc, the world's second-largest independent oil company, aims to knock down the cost of monitoring equipment at a Washington state oil refinery, from thousands of dollars per measurement to hundreds, by replacing big, dumb, wired sensors with wireless ones in a network. And Hewlett-Packard is experimenting with wireless networked sensors at a warehouse in Memphis, Tenn., trying to reinvent how companies manage the flow of goods. A prototype wireless network of small video-camera sensors hooked to image-recognition software works in concert with radio-frequency identification technology to make sure inventory is put in the right place. The cameras track goods as they move through the warehouse, and those images get matched with RFID tag numbers that describe them. Wireless sensor-network technology is at the frontier of computer networking research and could be tech's next multibillion-dollar market. Today largely the domain of military-funded academic research and a handful of startups spun out of these projects, wireless sensor nets could figure prominently in the plans of multinational companies and the world's largest IT vendors. Wireless sensor devices, or "motes," package together a circuit board with networking and application software; interfaces to sensors that can detect changes in temperature, pressure, moisture, light, sound, or magnetism; and a wireless radio that can report on their findings--all powered by a pair of AA batteries. Enabled by the fusion of small, low-cost chips, low-powered radios, and the spread of wireless networking, motes are a giant leap ahead of traditional sensors that for decades have measured everything from temperature in buildings to factory machines' vibrations. Those sensors require wiring to electrical systems, which can cost $200 to $400 per sensor, and are expensive to service. Motes cost about $100 each, and are much cheaper to install. That price could drop to less than $10 in a few years, as mote components follow computing's march toward higher volumes, better performance, and lower prices. One breakthrough of mote technology is special "mesh networking" software that lets each device wake up for a fraction of a second when it has an interesting result to transmit, then relay that information a few yards to its nearest neighbor. So instead of every sensor transmitting its information to a remote base station, an electronic bucket brigade moves data mote by mote until it reaches a central computer where it can be stored and analyzed. Built-in logic corrects for the failure of any sensor to transmit its data by having its neighbors cover for it. The wake-up-to-transmit feature is key, since devices need to conserve power so networks can last for years unattended in the field or anywhere data gets acquired nonstop. "This technology enabled a major advance," says Tom Sereno, a division manager at SAIC. Just 2% of the U.S. border is outfitted with ground-sensor networks that can detect illegal crossings of people or vehicles. And those sensors have shorter life spans than the wireless motes with which SAIC is developing its applications. It's using motes from Dust Networks Inc., a startup based on research originally done at the University of California at Berkeley and funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, to help secure border crossings and other sensitive areas by combining the sensors, which can detect people, vehicles, voices, and motion, on a network with a tiny camera for snapping images. SAIC is working on similar applications that could use tiny, remote sensors on ships or in shipping containers to detect radiation from a nuclear weapon emitted during transit, or detect someone trying to sabotage a bridge. "Many of these things can be done now, but they require human surveillance," Sereno says. "This allows much of that to be automated." The potential for cost savings over traditional wired sensors is enormous. BP installed five wireless sensors over Christmas at its Cherry Point refinery in Washington to monitor the temperature inside giant on-site fans. Using the motes will probably cost about $1,000 per measurement point--and maybe $500 within a year or two, says Harry Cassar, technology director in BP's emerging-tech group. Each connection measured the old way cost $10,000. BP achieved the $500-per-point measurement in a test last summer to measure conditions in the engine room of an oil tanker. And BP envisions using wireless networks of sensors to monitor industrial plants and ships, remotely adjust lighting and heat in office buildings, test soil for pollutants, and detect whether chemicals are stored properly. "Wireless mote technology has got applications in almost every part of our business," Cassar says. "We're not going to be putting in tens of these devices, or even hundreds. Ultimately, it's going to be thousands." The technology also is gaining interest because sensor nets can be used with RFID to more cheaply identify and track goods, machinery, or hazardous chemicals. "We see IT expanding out of data centers and into buildings and factory floors," says Salil Pradhan, HP's chief technology officer for RFID. The academic world has been obsessed with making RFID tags and sensors cheap and power-efficient, Pradhan says, and the market for "multisensor fusion" is going to be huge. HP isn't the only organization trying to couple RFID and motes. At Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California, NASA is preparing to use smart sensors and RFID tags to monitor hazardous chemicals (see "RFID Lets NASA Monitor Hazardous Materials," Jan. 10, 2005). Most pilot tests so far have been modest, but companies including Boeing, Chevron-Texaco, Honeywell, Motorola, and Siemens all are exploring the technology. In December, Japanese tech conglomerate Fujitsu Ltd. disclosed a research agreement with Xerox subsidiary Palo Alto Research Center to explore equipping buildings with networked earthquake sensors, outfitting cars with wireless sensors to avoid collisions, and more. At a summit of world leaders in Jakarta, Indonesia, following December's tsunami, plans for building a network of sensors in the Indian Ocean to warn of undersea earthquakes were at the agenda's fore. But the fast money in the next few years probably will be made delivering wireless sensor nets to big companies as cheaper replacements for routine maintenance and monitoring of operations, such as controlling lighting or providing security around a building or at a border. Intel, for example, has outfitted an Oregon chip-fabrication plant with 200 wireless sensors that constantly monitor vibration levels on some of the factory equipment and report when a measurement falls out of spec. The effort covers only a fraction of the plant's 4,000 measurable parts but has replaced some rounds by a technician who gets to each machine only every two or three months, Intel Research associate director Hans Mulder says. General Electric Co. this month completed a test of sensor-outfitted shipping containers that can detect tampering, and it's developing products that could use mesh networks to secure apartment buildings and industrial areas. And Bechtel Group Inc., the largest U.S. engineering and construction company, may within a year or two start testing sensor nets that use a new standard, IEEE 802.15.4, that lets motes self-assemble into a network without programmers specifying what route the data takes. Bechtel has built wireless sensors into projects such as London's subway system and expects the technology to have applications in smart buildings, defense contracts, and chemical plants, infrastructure architecture manager Fred Wettling says. "We see this just starting to take off." By 2008, there could be 100 million wireless sensors in use, up from about 200,000 today, market-research company Harbor Research says. The worldwide market for wireless sensors, it says, will grow from $100 million this year to more than $1 billion by 2009. If the technology is to lead to new applications that can open up new markets, sensors' data has to be readily consumed by widely used business software. More industry standards are needed so software vendors have common ways of pulling sensor data from networks that contain sensor nodes of varying intelligence, made by different manufacturers. Researchers also are working on embedding software into sensors to make them more selective about what data is transmitted back to base or to condense information to conserve even more power. Without that capability, large sensor networks could quickly overwhelm themselves, and back-end computers, by draining bandwidth and battery power trying to transmit a flood of data from the field. But there will still be plenty of data to analyze, and big tech vendors and consultants are going after the emerging market for computer systems and software to do just that. HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, SAP, and Sun Microsystems all have recently formed research or product groups to refine and commercialize the technology. For example, SAP is working with Intel and other companies to make sure its applications can consume and analyze the sensor data. SAP and BP also are participants in a European Union-funded project scheduled for this year to build "smart items" such as chemical barrels that broadcast warnings when they're inappropriately stored. The tech giants already cede the mote market to companies such as Dust, which last year landed funding from the CIA's venture-capital arm, In-Q-Tel. Ember Corp., a startup based on work at MIT, has attracted an investment from Ethernet inventor and 3Com Corp. founder Bob Metcalfe. And Crossbow Technology Inc. has been selling to BP and supplying Intel's projects. "We're not competing with startups," HP's Pradhan says. The big IT vendors want to supply huge volumes of chips for motes, then sell installation services, but their primary goals are to develop new applications for sensor nets and sell software and consulting services. One big problem to solve: the lack of software tools that can program whole networks of sensors in one shot. "For every dollar the big systems integrators and IBM make on sensors and installation, there's $10 to be made on the management of the data that comes out," says Kris Pister, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at UC Berkeley, who founded Dust in 2002 and serves as its CTO. IBM, which plans to spend $250 million during the next five years on the technology and has created a "sensors and actuators" business unit, predicts wireless sensor nets could represent a $6 billion overall market by 2007, with the bulk of profits from software that helps the devices better communicate and lets customers interpret data from them. "Sensors are just a part of an ecosystem of wireless devices," says Feng Zhao, a senior researcher at Microsoft who joined the company last year from PARC to head up a new sensor nets research group on Microsoft's Redmond, Wash., campus. His test bed is parking level P2 of building No. 112, where a handful of sensors detect the size, speed, and magnetism of everything that crosses the garage's threshold, triangulating data from video images and magnetic readings of staffers' cars. At a remote PC, a researcher can analyze the day's traffic by logging on to a Web site and posing queries using standard Web-programming techniques. It works in a restricted scenario and with research prototypes, Zhao says, but "we need to figure out how to organize these systems and develop interesting applications for them" for real-world use. "For all these apps, writing software is very challenging. That will probably be a stumbling block between sensors and killer apps." "It's kind of like the beginning of the Arpanet days for this sensor-net technology, where there's no killer app yet," says Teresa Lunt, manager of the computer-science lab at PARC. A PARC research project called "smart matter" aims to embed sensors in the environment, and the center has done experiments with Darpa funding, including using sensor nets to track a mock military tank based on its signature sounds. At current prices, though, minus the sensors attached to them, wireless motes are still impractical for most large networks, Lunt says. "But they've served as a placeholder people can use to envision applications with the understanding that they'll be replaced by better technology," she says. "They've been igniting people's imaginations." Sensor proponents predict a day when superhighways will be salted with motes that help drivers avoid collisions, bridges report when they're seismically stressed, and networks of video cameras pick terrorists out of a crowd. That's a long way from turning down the air conditioning when it gets too hot. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Tue Jan 25 02:48:23 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (saic at vision.moundalexis.com) Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2005 21:48:23 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] AllTell ends SAIC pact early Message-ID: <20050124214539.P488-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> January 24, 2005 22 remaining jobs to be cut at OR facility at month's end http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/tech/article/0,1406,KNS_8976_3492352,00.html --- By LARISA BRASS, brass at knews.com By the end of the month, 22 workers at Science Applications International Corp. in Oak Ridge will be out of a job. The layoffs result from the early termination of a contract SAIC held with wireless carrier AllTel. It was one of two contracts SAIC held related to wireless number portability, a federally-mandated provision enabling the transfer of phone numbers from wireless carrier to wireless carrier and from landline to wireless phones. SAIC hired about 100 people in the fall of 2002 when it received contracts with Arkansas-based AllTel and Chicago-based U.S. Cellular, according to Jerry Parsons, manager of SAIC's IT support business, including the company's call center operations. Parsons said SAIC helped companies prepare for the transition in the months preceding Nov. 24, 2003, when number portability went into effect. The company also had built a software tool called Telcordia to assist companies in numbers that proved more difficult to transfer. SAIC's job was to manage "fallout" from the routine porting of numbers, he said. That meant handling orders that didn't have complete information or for other reasons couldn't be ported automatically through the cell phone companies' systems. "A lot of what's happened to fallout management is there's been a lot less volume than anticipated," Parsons said. A spike in work occurred after the Nov. 24 deadline and again last May, when number portability went into effect for more rural locales. But, he said, "In all those other times, when those spikes wore off, those volumes faded quite a bit. We ended up doing about 28 percent of the volume projected." In the end, although U.S. Cellular struck a new one-year contract with SAIC, AllTel - which represented the bulk of SAIC employees working on the number portability contracts - decided to pull its work in-house about three years early. SAIC announced the cancellation of the AllTel contract in October to the approximately 50 employees still working on the job. Many already had left through attrition and other job placement, Parsons said. Even more have left since the announcement to find jobs within and outside the company, and when the contract expires at the end of January, he said, 22 employees will officially be laid off. About six people will remain with SAIC to work on the U.S. Cellular contract, Parsons said. SAIC employs about 1,000 locally. While a decent-sized contract, the number portability work "was really ancillary to our primary core competencies," he said. "The wireless number portability business was really a project to us." Parsons said the SAIC help desk has recently garnered new contracts with America Online and Marathon Oil, and some of the AllTel workers have been placed on the new jobs. Most of the jobs eliminated were entry-level positions requiring a high school diploma and limited technical background. He said SAIC would not disclose information regarding severance packages provided the laid off employees. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Tue Jan 25 02:49:19 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (saic at vision.moundalexis.com) Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2005 21:49:19 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] SAIC rebuffs Trilogy flak Message-ID: <20050124214825.E488-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 01/24/05 SAIC rebuffs Trilogy flak http://www.washingtontechnology.com/news/20_2/datastream/25369-1.html --- Rejecting criticism that it botched a $170 million IT upgrade project with FBI, Science Applications International Corp. asserted that it has performed well and the FBI is partly to blame for problems. The FBI switched the focus of the Trilogy IT modernization project and changed systems requirements after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, SAIC said, responding to criticism by lawmakers following a report in Government Computer News about the program. GCN is owned by PostNewsweek Tech Media, which also owns Washington Technology. The FBI is considering abandoning the Virtual Case File system, awarded to SAIC in 2001, because of missed deadlines, cost overruns and program snafus. It will decide after an independent evaluation of the system. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Sat Jan 29 23:21:06 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (saic at vision.moundalexis.com) Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2005 18:21:06 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] SAIC: Thieves Steal Computers With Stockholder Info Message-ID: <20050129182008.V488-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 4:57 pm PST January 28, 2005 SAIC: Thieves Steal Computers With Stockholder Info http://www.10news.com/news/4141983/detail.html --- SAN DIEGO -- People who own stock in SAIC were warned Friday after several computers were stolen from one of its administrative facilities. The San Diego defense contractor said the computers contained personal information on current and former stockholders. SAIC filed a police report with San Diego authorities. The company has no evidence that the thieves were able to hack into the computers, but SAIC is notifying the stockholders of the theft. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Mon Jan 31 00:38:08 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (saic at vision.moundalexis.com) Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2005 19:38:08 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] Opinion: In Iraq and Qatar the U.S. has not defended press freedoms Message-ID: <20050130193529.O488-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> Monday, January 31, 2005 Opinion: In Iraq and Qatar the U.S. has not defended press freedoms http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=12231 --- Commentary by By William A. Rugh It is no simple matter for the United States to apply its cherished press freedom principles in its Middle East policy, as recent experiences with Iraq and Qatar illustrate. After the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq ended Saddam Hussein's iron-fisted control over that country's media, the occupying Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) - composed of officials from the United States and other countries that are proud of their press freedoms - quickly chose to establish a free and independent indigenous media network. The CPA outsourced the implementation of that task to a private American firm, the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), which specialized in supplying the Pentagon with advanced technologies but had no experience in the media field. SAIC created the Iraq Media Network (IMN), which included FM radio, a television station, and a newspaper, Al-Sabah. But the IMN was hardly independent because the CPA, through SAIC, kept a close watch over its content. The project quickly ran into difficulties. When the television station went on the air on May 13, 2003, the Iraqi public, expecting great things from the Americans, was disappointed with the programs and eventually many Iraqi and even American staff resigned because of heavy-handed CPA influence. The CPA's own surveys showed that Iraqis preferred to watch Al-Jazeera or even the Iranian channel Al-Alam because the style of IMN television resembled a government-owned station. One report described it as "America's Pravda." In January 2004, the Pentagon switched from SAIC to the Harris Corporation of Florida (a communications equipment company) to manage the IMN. Harris in turn hired the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation International to help out. The content of the television station, by then renamed Al-Iraqiyya, improved somewhat, using mostly material purchased outside Iraq; but it also seemed to have a Lebanese tone and it still could not compete with non-Iraqi broadcasters. In the meantime, the CPA allowed private Iraqi newspapers to emerge, and dozens did. But it also decreed that all broadcasters must be licensed and that licenses would be revoked for incitement and other political acts. It established a commission to draft media laws and issue licenses. The CPA shut down or suspended some newspapers and broadcasters for violating CPA standards, a practice that has been continued by the interim Iraqi government after the CPA was disbanded in June 2004. U.S. ambivalence toward the idea of more open Arab media did not begin with the occupation of Iraq. While loudly championing the cause of Middle East freedom, the Bush administration has displayed great concern with Qatar's Al-Jazeera, the most free in the region. Washington took little notice of the channel, founded in 1996, until after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks when Al-Jazeera carried statements by Osama bin Laden that were rebroadcast by American commercial networks. In October 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell complained to Qatar's ruler, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, that the station was helping bin Laden by broadcasting his messages uncritically. Sheikh Hamad deflected the complaint, saying it was misdirected because Al-Jazeera was a private station. While this is technically true, he could have influenced Al-Jazeera if he wanted to, because he subsidizes it. Yet since Al-Jazeera has helped put Qatar on the global map, and because the station has rebuffed complaints about its bold coverage from virtually every Arab government since it went on the air, Sheikh Hamad could not simply cave into American pressure. Tensions increased after the U.S. intervention in Iraq, and Washington again complained to Qatar. Powell told the Qatari foreign minister in April 2004 that Al-Jazeera was inciting Arab audiences to violence against American troops, and that its news coverage was undermining good U.S.-Qatari relations. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld accused Al-Jazeera of "vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable reporting," and other officials echoed these charges. The Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), appointed by the CPA, also denounced Al-Jazeera and other Arab broadcasters operating in Iraq for their newscasts, some of which featured statements by Saddam before his capture and insurgents' messages. The IGC closed down their offices temporarily and banned their reporters from some press conferences. It seems ironic that although the United States stands for freedom of expression, it has often behaved like an authoritarian government in Iraq and pressured the Qatari government to crack down on the region's most popular television station. Moreover, many who have watched the new U.S.-run Arabic language satellite television channel Al-Hurra report that it resembles many state-run Arab television channels that carry only pro-regime propaganda. These disconnects, which Arabs regard as evidence of American double standards, illustrate that policy-makers take many factors into account when making decisions. The application of a single principle - no matter how lofty - does not always work in practice. Press freedom has limits everywhere, and foreign policy goals combined with local conditions help determine the extent of those limits. William A. Rugh, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Arab Emirates and Yemen, is the author of "Arab Mass Media: Newspapers, Radio, and Television in Arab Politics" (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004).