BRIEFING BOOK
Black money hole. The National Security Agency has drawn its cloak of secrecy over money matters, according to a Defense Department inspector general report released earlier this month. The classified report, FY 1997 Financial Statements for the National Security Agency, found that NSA has not instituted required internal controls and does not comply with laws and regulations, such as the Chief Financial Officers Act, necessary to produce accurate financial statements.
Black money hole. The National
Security Agency has drawn its cloak of secrecy over money matters, according to a Defense
Department inspector general report released earlier this month.
The classified report, FY 1997 Financial Statements for the National Security Agency,
found that NSA has not instituted required internal controls and does not comply with laws
and regulations, such as the Chief Financial Officers Act, necessary to produce accurate
financial statements.
The NSA FY 1997 financial statements were materially incomplete and
inaccurate, the report said in its unclassified executive summary.
The financial statements omitted real property located at a field site, a portion
of Accounts Payable and a portion of operating expenses, it said.
This is not the first time the IG has criticized NSAs accounting procedures; an
August 1996 IG report found similar inaccuracies.
DLA kudos. The Defense Logistics Agency recently won
several 1998 Defense Department Value Engineering Achievement Awards after it saved DOD
$661 million by improving in-house and contractor productivity.
The annual awards recognize significant achievements in saving money. DLA won in six
categoriesprogram management, individual/team, professional, procurement/contract
administration, field command and contractoras well as a special category for
innovative approaches that expand the usual scope of value engineering.
Value engineering is a systematic functional analysis that leads to actions or
recommendations that improve the quality and reduce the costs of systems, equipment,
facilities, services and supplies.
Network backup. The Defense Information Systems Agency
has selected NetBackup from Veritas Software Corp. of Mountain View, Calif., to provide
midtier storage management for up to 1,000 servers running Unix and PCs running Microsoft
Windows.
Under DISAs Continuity of Operations Plan, NetBackup will ensure around-the-clock
availability of mission-critical data by providing online backups of Oracle Corp., Sybase
Inc. and Microsoft SQL Server databases, as well as Microsoft Exchange.
BPA first. The Navy has established its first-ever
blanket purchasing agreement with Opal Technologies Inc. of Columbia, Md., for desktop
PCs, servers, parts and peripherals.
The BPA, estimated to be worth as much as $40 million, represents a change of focus for
Opal. The company has in the past concentrated on the commercial market with clients such
as CompUSA Inc., Erols Internet and Johns Hopkins University.
Gregory Slabodkin
gslabodkin@gcn.com
NEXT STORY: LAB NOTES