BRIEFING BOOK
<b>Claim settled.</b> Five years after vendors admitted to overcharging the Defense Department for labor costs on a networking equipment contract, the parent company agreed to pay the government $4.5 million to settle claims.
Five years after vendors admitted to overcharging the Defense Department for labor costs on a networking equipment contract, the parent company agreed to pay the government $4.5 million to settle claims.In 1995, Digital Equipment Corp. officials submitted a Voluntary Disclosure Report that said they had inflated labor charges on work performed in Orlando, Fla., and Frankfurt, Germany, under the Navy PC-LAN contract, according to a July 26 Justice Department announcement.Digital, now owned by Compaq Computer Corp., had converted the costs of some parts, and shipping and warehousing costs into labor hours, the Justice statement said.The Navy PC-LAN contract started in 1991 and ended in 1996. GTSI Corp. of Chantilly, Va., sold $8 million worth of Toughbook portable PCs through its Air Force Information Technology Tools blanket purchasing agreement from Oct. 1, 1999, to June 30, said Col. Neal I. Fox, director of the Standard Systems Group's commercial information technology product area directorate.That SSG unit manages the contract at the Gunter Annex of Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala.From March 1999'when the BPA was awarded'to Sept. 30, 1999, DOD organizations bought $1.6 million in Panasonic products from Panasonic Personal Computer Co. of Secaucus, N.J., through the GTSI BPA, Fox said. The Army will hold an Information Assurance Conference Sept. 12 and Sept. 13 at the Army Research Laboratory in Adelphi, Md. The Association of Old Crows is running the event, which is open to U.S. citizens with security clearances.Philip Loranger, the director of the Army biometrics program office, is the conference's technical program coordinator.Lt. Gen. Peter M. Cuviello, the Army's chief information officer, will speak, as will Lt. Col. Kirk Krist, information assurance director at the service's directorate of information systems for command, control, communications and computers, and Maj. Gen. John Thomas, commanding general at the Army Intelligence Center. Since signing an enterprise license for Microsoft Corp. BackOffice and Office suite products with Beyond.com of Sunnyvale, Calif., in June 1997, Defense Logistics Agency officials have bought $35 million in software through the agreement, said Larry J. Wilson, DLA's acting executive director for corporate information services.
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