Company hired for Va. IT help costing money, disrupting work

You have not paid too much attention to NG lately . They are really big in the IT field, and have been for quite a while.
My complaint is who in the state legislature is getting paid for their services to see that NG got the contract to begin with.
Some one in our legislature has dirty but wealthy hands, check to see who received the big contributions from NG.

When you think of the IT industry, does Northrop Grumman Corp come to your mind? I would think not! I would think if you follow the money trail you'd find the pay-off and the reason to give NG such a contract.

Oh yea, for all the switch ninjas, packet warriors, infosec types, embedded developers, computer students or other IT / computer / tech field types, there is a local website that may be of interest. www.HRGeeks.com. We have monthly social meetings, and track all of the local professional meetings and stuff. It's not commercial, just social.

It's interesting to see the comments about NMCI, I did a short stint there. People have heard me say that I think many of the better jobs in Hampton Roads are not challenging, and by this I refer to many of the gov't contractor jobs. Working for a private company is much more rewarding. I don't want to get paid to sit and do nothing so that some billion dollar company can make more money from the gov't. In Hampton Roads most of the better paid jobs are gov't contractors, and if you think about it, it's kind of like a legitimized welfare. The fact the gov't can't hire direct because it's too inefficient to be able to fire people is silly. I can see where the IT stuff is hard, I'd be willing to bet that a large part of the people involved aren't up on their game.

The fact that L. Stewart, VITA's CIO, was removed shows that Northrup Grumman has taken over control of the state information networks and is using power and politics to run the show. I agree with other commenters below that this is the same sort of mess that was created when the NMCI contract was awarded to EDS. NG saw this IT contact as a way to latch onto the state cash cow and suck it dry for years and years. The Northrup Grumman contract should be shut down.

This is an example of the sort of mess created by lawyers and lawyer/politicians. If the Va Pilot or Richmond Times Dispatch were to use FOIA discovery to find out what was behind Stewart's removal or the backroom activitites that enabled NG to take over the commonwealth's communications infrastructure, it would be a good story.

This is a bit of a left turn but it's something that shakes me to the core and until people wake up and become proactive, nothing will change until it's too late. We as a people, culture, nation need to focus on qualities on individualism and teamwork. This snowball effect of selfishness or mess-it-up-then-apologize when exposed is going to put our nation on a path of the Roman collapse.

It's shameful that our educators, especially developmental stages, are paid what they are. If not at home, it's in school where character is built and supported amongst other factors. It's no wonder that stories like these are becoming worse and more prevolent. The Romans collapse was from the inside out.

VITA's two-way radio contract (for instance) was only bid to the manufacturers, which means that the local Virginia based distributors were left out in the cold. Of course, when the state needed service and support for the equipment they had purchased, they called on the local guys to do it for free. Who wins here, BIG BUSINESS!!!

Shameful -- simply shameful. This is a case of out and out greed, egos, and incompetence coming together to create this "Perfect Storm" disaster. I have seen and been through this before -- and -- I've seen millions of dollars go down the tubes for nothing! As a long time worker in the IT industry -- I learned early on that there is a right way to doing things as well as a wrong way to doing things. Why both private sector and government choose to do things the wrong way is beyond me.

Clearly the Northrop Grumman contract needs to be terminated -- but -- they are slated to take full control of the state's IT infrastructure?

The state's CIO outlines all the problems and suggests a plan to get back on track -- but -- instead a head in the sand attitude is taken by getting rid of the CIO?

Wrong things to do. And this is more like a deep pit than a "rocky patch."

They design everything they contract with to have loopholes to keep the work going forever. They are Corporate greed at its best. I worked for a small contractor who got scraps from NG. It was nothing but a joke and a horrid waste of tax dollars. If I did my taxes like they did their contracts, I'd be in jail. Its the old "get your buddy rich" thing. They have deals with military guys to get the contracts pushed through and with civil servants too. Then, they promise cushy jobs upon retirement with FAT salaries for little work... just networking and more of the same. It is a vicious cycle with a lot of unneeded extras.

I worked for 6 moths with an IT company that did major overhauls. I was in a 1 single overhaul, for a trucking company. I am a hardware specialist.
The planners setup a timeline with inputs from programmers, implementation specialists, the company itself, and then Me, hardware and and hardware implemetation.

6 moths later, we had all in house funtioning 100%, and ready to install at company sites, including routers.

Politicians are always happy to help their corporate and big business cronies become wealthy with the taxpayer's money by awarding them big contracts for overpriced inferior goods and worthless services. Ex. Governor Mark Warner was the one who touted this as a big win for Virgina. This sounds like another case of the Whistle Blower getting the axe.

Some 15 years ago a Pilot reporter named Greg Lampman wrote a series of articles about Virginia's state computer systems, how they were being developed along non-parallel directions and would not interact with one another, and how this was a train wreck in the making.

In 15 years they haven't been able to solve this? In a state that was heavily involved in the actual birth of the Internet? And their latest effort is to fire the PR guy?

My, my ... how terribly progressive. (Oops! Sorry, I used the word "progressive" -- a slip that could get me indicted in dear ol' Virginny.)

If we did not have such a nanny government, then maybe we would not need 85 agencies. NG may be at fault here but bloated government does not do a good job of overseeing anything.

that Stewart lost his job over "a difference of opinion over how to deal with the problems" and "paying a contractor nothing was not an appropriate response" WHILE GC gets to continue to "try" to work on the problems, being millions in the red and having a shortfall of $6million this year sure has me looking "under the rug." Good ole' politics -- don't dare to disagree...

Northrup Grumman essentially took the state infrastructure, planning, purchasing, and support over from the state. NG dictates the purchase of expensive hardware that does not necessarily perform as well as equipment from competitors. Most of the work appears to be done by people outside the state, meaning the taxpayer’s money is going out the state rather than being reused by businesses within the state to generate additional business within the state.

The idea of having a centrally managed technology infrastructure is a good idea in principle, but the way it was implemented was stupid. The way it was done is like asking a motorcycle gang to baby site your fourteen and sixteen year old daughters!

My brother has been a sub contractor in IT for many years. NG's subs will come out and fix a small problem on your computer while uploading a bigger "virus" or "trojan" so they can come out and fix it the next week in order to bill more to NG which NG, in turn, bills to the state. It is a giant scam with no oversight.

I lost two days of work last week due to a simple problem my brother could have fixed for me, but I didn't have the admin passwords so couldn't fix the problem myself. Instead NG sent out a sub contractor who took two days to fix it. 16 hours of services to fix a 15 minute issue...all that paid for by our tax dollars.

Sounds like the guy that got fired might be a candidate for a whistleblower lawsuit.

I couldn't agree with you more. This sounds just like NMCI. I'm employed where one third of our work is performing NMCI's tasks. We are understaffed and overwhelmed. NMCI is contractually obligated to perform this work. Upper leadership(?) dictates that we must support them to ensure there is no failure. No one in our organization is willing to step up and say "Enough is enough". Their primary concern is their position and income. They won't rock the boat. In the navy, you only move up if you're a 'yes' man. I have no reason to believe that this boondoggle the state finds itself in is nothing more than a replication of NMCI. Too many people making critical decisions about something they know nothing about. If the taxpayers truly knew how much money is thrown away by our 'reprsentatives' there would be mass revolting in the streets.

I can't believe that any agency would have an IT contract that lasts for more that 12 months. This and every other VITA contract should be re-bid much more often to assure fair, competitive pricing and the latest technology. This is just another example of how 'big business' takes control of our government agencies and costs the tax payers more money...

on Mark Warner's watch? Anyone know if it was put up for competition or did NG get a sweetheart "no-bid" like Halliburton?
Wonder did Warner get any campaign donations for his Senate bid from NG? Just askin . . .