December 29, 2011
When your hear about executives in government, private industry and civil service working together to establish a collaborative national vision, you may not immediately think about our national infrastructure.
But in the breakout infrastructure piece in GovCon Exec magazine’s winter issue, we spoke with many GovCon leaders who analyzed where GovCon firms are poised to fuel the framework and foundations of our future economic competitiveness.
To align leaders and stockholders by “re-imagining” infrastructure and forming new business and financing models, GovCon execs see extensions of experience with long delivery schedules and upgradable platforms as necessary to success.
The way to enable sustainable, upgradable and forward-looking technology is to “get out of the ‘first cost’ mentality and into a lifecycle costs mentality,” said Darcy Immerman, senior vice president of energy at AECOM.
“Operations and maintenance costs, lifecycle costs, can be factored into upfront design,” added Gregory Frank, general manager for defense and security at Bechtel.
But, all this is for naught without a vision that defines the whole system’s function and performance over its entire lifecycle, said Mark Gerencser, executive vice president
at Booz Allen Hamilton. “Only with such a vision can we devise an integrated policy
that spans government bureaucracy silos and enables key stakeholders to operate in
alignment.”
For these and more GovCon Exec insights, check out the issue.
This week, retired Marine Corps Gen. James Jones joined Deloitte as a senior adviser,
where he will work with the firm’s defense practice and federal customers.
Jones most recently served as the White House’s national security adviser and CEO of
the U.S. Chamber Institute for 21st Century Energy, which aims to unify policymakers,
business leaders and the American public behind a common energy strategy.
Gerenscer identified energy, water and transportation as particularly important “lifeline”
areas in need of infrastructure solutions.
Former federal chief information officer Vivek Kundra has joined Salesforce.com as
executive vice president of emerging markets.
While in office, Kundra formulated a 25-point plan to transform federal IT, with
emphasized tapping the best practices and technologies of the private sector to maximize
efficiencies.
The General Services Administration has selected Computer Sciences Corp. to host
the infrastructure that houses the applications GSA uses for acquisitions, such as GSA
Advantage and eBuy. Over up to 5 years, CSC will also consult the agency’s migration of
these applications to cloud computing.
General Dynamics Information Technology was awarded a prime position on the $497
million Omnibus III contract, which supports procedures for vaccine development and
other medical research for the U.S. Navy. Marcus Collier, GDIT’s senior vice president
for health and civilian solutions, said the work will support military personnel and their
families.
CGI Federal took home a U.S. Army contract to provide C4ISR support across the
branch’s artillery support systems. The work will include software development and
fielding, and will take place over the course of one to two years.
Soon after the Department of Homeland Security selected John Streufert to succeed the
Raytheon-bound Nicole Dean as director of the department’s cybersecurity division,
DHS will now assume control of a Defense Department pilot program that has increased
sharing of cyber information between the government and private sector.
DoD has been exchanging information with 17 contractors, including AT&T, Northrop
Grumman, Verizon, Raytheon, CenturyLink and Lockheed Martin.
Lockheed Martin won a $980 million follow-on IDIQ to update and expand the capabilities of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency. The company’s information systems and global solutions business will support the agency’s command and control, battle management and communications operations.
SAIC, L-3 Communications and CACI International each won positions on IDIQs to support the U.S. Navy’s C4I operations. The companies will compete for orders to help implement and integrate C4I system components and networks.
Booz Allen Hamilton won an award with the Department of Transportation to conduct research and analysis on programs that aim to create and integrate intelligent vehicles and infrastructure. One program is developing a fully-connected transportation system that uses applications to ease transfer between public travel methods.
Raytheon won a contract this week to finish incorporating surveillance and broadcast technologies into a Federal Aviation Administration system for space-based navigation and air traffic management. The work is part of the FAA’s next-generation plan that is intended to transform the National Airspace System.
The Army has announced it is searching for a cloud computing tool for intelligence collection and analysis as it looks to maintain momentum as it transfers its intelligence process to the cloud. The Army is currently investing in an app mall and is pursuing collaboration with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency for encryption.
DRS Technologies’ technical services subsidiary will provide the Navy with joint platform tablet systems to connect the C4ISR systems for the vehicles of Special Operations forces. The tablet systems will aim to enable all operators to control and monitor navigational and intelligence gathering systems, among others.
DRS Technical Services will also help install information technology infrastructure for the Army’s command and control capabilities. Work locations will include Afghanistan, Kuwait, Qatar, Israel and Korea.
The National Health Information Sharing & Analysis Center announced it will leverage the National Institute of Standards and Technology‘s cybersecurity workforceframework to support programs intended to develop the cyber skills of American workers. The center was established by a 2003 presidential executive order and monitors cybersecurity threats to domestic health information infrastructure.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT is creating an electronic dashboard that will help government bodies and private companies receiving electronic health record assistance. ONC will provide healthcare providers and other grantees with an interactive database that can help measure and evaluate how well they are integrating healthcare IT upgrades.
When Congress passed final fiscal year 2012 budgets for federal agencies, ExecutiveGov found that top line numbers couldn’t tell the whole story. ExecutiveGov hastaken a look at how much agencies spend on contracting and which individual functions were affected.
