State Department<br>2201 C St. NW, Washington, DC 20520<br>202-647-4000<br>http://www.state.gov<br>Founded: 1789<br>Secretary: Colin Powell<br>Chief of staff: Lawrence Wilkerson<br>Employees: 30,900<br>
The four companies that have received limited legal liability protection from the Homeland Security Department for an anti-terrorism product or service have an advantage that their competitors don't: assurance that they won't be sued for unlimited damages if a terrorist attack causes their technologies to fail.
IT industry groups are welcoming news from the SBA that the agency would reassess a plan to change the size standards defining a small business for the purposes of federal government contracting.
Federal agencies aren't adequately measuring the effects of contract bundling on small businesses, according to a General Accounting Office report published today.
When Daly Computers Inc. was preparing to bid on Virginia's statewide computer and peripherals contracts, it called one of its distributors, Ingram Micro Inc., for help -- not that it was expecting much. "When we used to go to our distributors for help, they would usually just throw a list of products at us," said company president <b>Ryan Yu</b>. Not this time.
The federal government plans to aggressively market cooperative purchasing to state and local governments until it receives widespread adoption, a congressman says.
Two and a half years ago, Ken Buck was glad to leave his job promoting share-in-savings contracting for the General Services Administration. He was frustrated that few agencies and contractors had tried the method, despite its authorization by law in 1996.
Information Systems Support Inc. has been added to the Washington Technology 2004 Top 100 at No. 48, with prime IT contracting revenue of $138.7 million for the 12 months from July 1, 2002 through June 30, 2003.
The good news for government information technology contractors is that the annual $60 billion federal budget isn't likely to decline any time soon. The bad news is that the budget isn't likely to increase much, either, according to government and industry experts. "There aren't huge dollars available to increase the IT budget, but the IT pie is going to be divided differently," said <b>Debra Stouffer</b>, former chief information officer at the Environmental Protection Agency and now an executive at DigitalNet Holdings Inc.
Two of the nation's top IT defense companies are entangled in the Iraqi prisoner-abuse scandal that has sparked international outrage and caused a diplomatic crisis for the United States.
Two of the nation's top IT defense companies are entangled in the Iraqi prisoner-abuse scandal that has sparked international outrage and caused a diplomatic crisis for the United States.
The Homeland Security Department awarded almost 41 percent of its prime contracts to small businesses between the department's creation March 1, 2003, and Sept. 30, 2003, the end of the fiscal year, according to the department's Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization. The annual federal goal for small-business prime contracting is 23 percent.
