Bacon's Rebellion

Big Savings from IT Reform?

—

by

James A. Bacon
in

Peter Bacque with the Richmond Times-Dispatch is doing a good job of staying on top of ongoing developments at the Virginia Information Technology Agency. In today’s report, he reveals that Northrup Grumman has received the state IT Investment Board’s backing for a nearly $2 billion contract to rebuild Virginia’s IT infrastructure.

The potential savings are significant. The deal would be worth $1.986 billion over its 10-year length — about $38 million a year less than VITA spends annually now on the state’s hardware and software. That’s about 19 percent per year. That’s serious money, folks.

Of course, aspects of the deal must be opened to public scrutiny and subjected to public critique. But based on the numbers reported so far, it looks like a major win for efficiency in government.

Share this article

ADVERTISEMENT

(comments below)

Comments

Comments

  1. Will Vehrs Avatar
    Will Vehrs

    Saying the savings will be $38 million annually doesn’t make it so. It would be nice to see how N-G is going to squeeze out that savings on hardware. Are prices going down that much? Is the state buying gold-plated stuff now?

    Will we see the first $38 million in savings in the budget Gov. Warner submits later this year?

  2. union man Avatar
    union man

    The Virginia IT privatization amounts to little more than Mark Warner selling-off the state system to big companies that will then support his further political ambitions. The IT contracting and privatization world is chock-full of boondoggles like this one at the federal, state, and local level. The biggest rip-off of taxpayers lately is the IT contracting scam; this fits that bill quite nicely. The whole Warner scheme is being concocted in secret, with no second opinions or guarantees involved. State workers will get fired, much of the work will be sent offshore, the profits will get pocketed, and the campign contributions will flow. This is but our small part of the out-of-control sale of government to these outfits, with taxpayers left holding the bag.

Leave a Reply

ADVERTISEMENT