VITA contract is six months late, says official
Published: June 30, 2009
Virginia's computer agency is six months behind schedule in putting in place a $2.3 billion contract with Northrop Grumman for info-tech services.
Leonard M. "Len" Pomata, acting head of the Virginia Information Technologies Agency, disclosed the delay yesterday in the opening of House of Delegates and state Senate inquiries into the controversy engulfing the sprawling department.
Pomata, installed when the previous chief information officer, Lemuel C. "Lem" Stewart Jr., was fired as CIO for questioning a monthly, $14.3 million bill from Northrop Grumman, said it now will be Christmas before the state's new, privately run IT management plan is implemented fully.
The venture, complicated by continuing complaints from agencies about poor, expensive service, is emerging as an election-year challenge for departing Democratic Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and legislators in both parties.
Kaine, who has defended the VITA-Northrop Grumman alliance, said through spokesman Gordon Hickey that he is deferring to the board that oversees the agency to set right the contract. That board is made up of gubernatorial and legislative appointees.
Speaking before a House committee that questioned whether Northrop Grumman is failing to fulfill its obligations under the state's richest-ever privatization pact, Pomata said "service levels, in general, are below expectations."
But when asked why the state had not withheld payments to Northrop Grumman to force improvements, Pomata, who also is Kaine's secretary of technology, said he had not determined how using the power of the purse would affect service.
Senators expressed concern about the cost of the program to taxpayers and asked whether the 10-year contract could be junked. Short of that, they wanted to know what steps could be taken to save money.
Sen. Yvonne B. Miller, D-Norfolk, head of the Senate Finance subcommittee investigating the troubled VITA-Northrop Grumman alliance, said "some bumps in the road" were anticipated, but "problems are bigger than expected."
Northrop Grumman, stepping up its response to a growing business and public-relations challenge, acknowledged difficulties.
They include, the Chantilly-based defense company said, delays in completing an inventory of all state-owned computer equipment -- a first step toward determining what needs to be replaced as well as the cost of upkeep. Northrop Grumman promised to assign more employees to the project.
"Transformation does not take place on a straight line," said Jorman Granger, a Northrop Grumman vice president and lobbyist who has been amassing contacts in Virginia government since serving as a top aide to then-Gov. L. Douglas Wilder nearly 20 years ago.
The company had no immediate comment on whether the price of the contract should be adjusted because of delays -- an idea floated by senators and delegates.
The General Assembly's accountant, the auditor of public accounts, reported to the Senate subcommittee that the state has blocked $13.6 million in payments to Northrop Grumman since 2006 for inadequate service. The company since has been paid about $5 million, reducing the withheld amount to $8 million.
Meantime, additional details emerged surrounding Stewart's dismissal.
James W. McGuirk II, chairman of the VITA board, said in a letter Friday to Del. Samuel A. Nixon Jr., R-Chesterfield, an IT expert and head of the House Republican Caucus, that Stewart was removed "to avoid a major rift in the program with Northrop Grumman."
McGuirk also said Stewart had the authority to stop payments, "regardless of the desire of the board."
Stewart, who remains a consultant to VITA, did not return a phone call seeking comment.
Illustrative of discontent with the VITA-Northrop Grumman deal: continuing concern over the recent hacking of drug-prescription records in the Department of Health Professions.
The agency's director, Sandra Whitley Ryals, told the House Science and Technology Committee that some physicians are concerned about prescribing serious pain medications because they don't have access to the drug data base.
Del. Harry R. Purkey, R-Virginia Beach, questioned whether the security failure represented a breach of contract by Northrop Grumman and is grounds to renegotiate.
Contact Olympia Meola at (804) 649-6812 or
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Contact Jeff E. Schapiro at (804) 649-6814 or .
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Reader Reactions
Come on… A bit of investigation is needed here:
1) Len Pomata, former honcho at Litton PRC who sold his business and made a load of change, sold his company to which contractor involved in this mess? None other than Northrop Grumman.
2) Pomata, who made mucho contributions to fortify Gov. Gilmore gets appointed to the GMU board and sat on the pay-as-you-go Northern Virginia Technology Council’s board.
3) Which Secretary of Technology switched making contributions to the GOP to filling the coffers of Mark “The Technology Governor” Warner and slides onto the IT Investment Board as a result? Sweet Len, of course!
4) Who sat on the IT Investment Board, which oversees VITA, while the NG contract is being mismanaged - none other than our Lenny boy!
So much hand washing - so many incestuous relationships - all at the cost of Virginia taxpayers!
JLARC’s study of VITA is misguided - they should be studying the ITIB!
And, hey, I wonder what’s contained in Lenny’s “Statement of Economic Interests” (if he’s required to file one with the State)? Think he owns stock in NG or one of it’s affiliates? Any bets?
jrcat7, there is another reason governments outsource: They are told to. This is initiated at the General Assembly level and in some cases, the directive is written into the Code, such as VDOT’s requirement to outsource the maintenance of the Interstates, or VITA. It doesn’t have to serve any agency need, make sense or save money. It just reflects some Legislator’s ability to sell the services of corporate donors at the state level.
Let’s not condemn outsourcing because of a bungled up engagement. It turns out that outsourcers are generally hungry to get contracts, even if they’re not qualified to handle the client if they get the deal. Many companies bring in a experienced consultant to help identify this and to visit references, in the same line of business. Many outsourcers, large and small, have successes and failures…as do many IT shops that are not outsourced.
Companies…and goverments go to an outsourcer either to save money, through the acquisition of the clients’ capital assets, or because management has given up on ever getting a screwed up IT shop straightened out.
P.S. I have a friend who was employed by VITA and gave me a great deal of “perspective from the other side.“ What amuses me most about this fiasco is that NG is trying to use “the Virginia Experiment” to market this same sort of outsourcing program to other states. They’ve also been hemorrhaging some money of their own to try to cover some of the botched-up messes they’ve made and create the appearance of a somewhat smooth transition. If this situation doesn’t serve as a warning to others about how risky it is to outsource all of the IT for a huge entity, with disparate elements within it and disparate needs, to an organization that takes a “one size fits all” approach, I don’t know what will. When, not if, this contract ends, where will the Commonwealth be then? There will be no in-house IT and no “organizational memory” to fall back on in that arena. There will be another train wreck trying to bring all this work back in-house, which is where it should have remained to begin with.
As a now-former employee who left a job with the Commonwealth (and not an IT job, just to be clear) last fall all I can say is, “This VITA mess is a shock?!!“ VITA has been nothing but a mess since the very start - an utterly inflexible entity that is concerned with having its own way rather than supporting the ongoing work of the agencies it’s supposed to work for. An IT organization should not be imposing its will, with no real way to make any accommodations, on the Commonwealth. Many of their rules make no sense. One great one was that state employees with personally owned PDAs (Palm devices, Windows Mobile handhelds, SmartPhones) who had been using them for years to manage their work schedules were told that they would no longer be allowed to connect to their PCs at the office to synchronize information (e.g. Calendar, To Do List, etc.) The only devices that would be permitted would be state-owned devices. Mind you, there is no funding to purchase replacements, there are no virus attacks known from any of these devices, and there is no way to “lock down” state-owned devices in a manner that would keep the end user from doing exactly what they did with personally owned devices. Appeals were useless. This knocked use of commonly available and widely used technology back some 15 years within my agency. VITA certainly wasn’t the reason I left my job, but not having to deal with VITA stupidity each day certainly makes my current situation preferable.
Classic: today the gov took time off from running for prez in 2012 and other pressing state matters to send state employees an email telling them to go plant a tree for the environment. The email included a link - that does not work.
Seems from today’s RTD the State now sees a problem with NG’s contract performance. Once again we see the failure of government efficency in running things, as they fight fires and attempt to respond politically versus in a business manner. And next year the state and feds may be running your health care!
Uvatech - One more factual point - It is true the agency owns the application that was hacked. The partnership owns (or is responsible for) the server, network, switches, routers, WAN circuits and firewalls and is responsible for the security of ALL network attached devices. The DHP servers are in a partnership ran datacenter over at the perimeter center. Someone had access to the server to compromise the data and this security is the reponsiblity of VITA/NG….period.
I know that certain NG employees were paid BONUSES for completing training by a certain deadline. Training, mind you not actual work or competency.
I haven’t seen a cost of living raise since 2007, or a merit increase since 1996, yet health care goes up each year and NG is giving bonuses with tax money?!!
Not to mention we pay VITA tens of thousands per month beyond what the GA budgets us to pay. Gov. Tim says suck it up and pay.
Uvatechtech - You should follow your own advice on making sure your facts are straight before posting your spin.
1) The partenership is clearly responsible for the delays to the contract. NG came in to the contract unable to perform even the most basic functions such as procurement. Plans for desktop refresh, as an example were technically unfeasable. It took several failures to come up with a plan to allow for a smooth process, which should have been a prereq to any rollout. All of the other major transformations have gone through similar failures based on inept and incompetent planning. The agencies had nothing to do with this lack of foresight and understanding. The one size fits all model will not work here just as it doesn’t work even in the NG corporation which is where this model came from! The centrallized computing model needs to be changed to a distributed model to fix this and NG just doesn’t get that.
2) The investment you speak of is really a bondogle for the state taxpayers in that it now allows NG to hold the state captive because they own the infrastruture. Many of the jobs you speak of already existed as state positions and were just transferred to NG so quit exagerating to spin your point into a misleading statistic!
3) The ITIB is a group of appointed individuals from private industry and VITA reports to them, not the governor.
One could conclude from this that state IT is run in a private fashion that it was referred too in the article.
4) Comments like yours just show the ignorance and arrogance of a certain cross-section of partnership employees. NG brought nothing cutting edge to the table. State IT prior to NG’s injection was actually fairly high rated, I believe it was first or second in the country. This was even stated at the NG town hall meetings during the employee conversion! I can tell you their was a much great satisfaction. You should wake up to the overwhelming critism of your less than adequate efforts. The goals are not being met, service is inadequate and the taxpayers are being robbed by paying alot more for much less. In the end it will cost the taxpayers a fortune to reverse this but even more damaging to stay with it. Virginia is being robbed. Name one agency (customer) that is happy with your efforts, I bet you cannnot.
It’s laughable that anyone call the prior IT efforts inflexible when one of the main complaints now is the rigid nature of the IT parternship. And finally I am not a disgruntled worker, I am an IT professional that calls it like it is. If the technology being deployed is so cutting edge, why is it that the 68000 desktops are being deployed with XP when this operating system is at its end of life. Oh it’s so the taxpayers can pay you for ANOTHER refresh to upgrade something that was just put in….duh!
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