Big technology players vie to upgrade NSA computers

[InfoSec News <isn () C4I ORG>]

http://www.msnbc.com/news/543372.asp

By Neil King Jr.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
March 13, 2001

What does it take to send an e-mail to all 38,000 employees at the
governments premier computing center, the supersecret National
Security Agency? An act of God, says the agencys director since 1999,
Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden.

THE NSA, HE DISCOVERED to his chagrin last year, has 68 e-mail
systems. He has three computers on his desk none of which can
communicate with the others.

To deal with those frustrations, Gen. Hayden is now plunging into one
of the U.S. governments biggest information-technology outsourcing
deals ever. More than 15 companies, including AT&T Corp., Computer
Sciences Corp., International Business Machines Corp., General
Dynamics Corp. and OAO Corp., have formed three teams to compete for a
contract set to be valued at as much as $5 billion over 10 years.
Requests for proposals went out last week; the winner will be chosen
by July.

Project Groundbreaker, as the job is called, will be a curious venture
by any measure.

The winning consortium will take over running the NSAs
office-technology infrastructure, including thousands of desktop
computers and a Medusa-like tangle of software and internal
communications systems. Gen. Hayden describes the current setup as
anarchic, convoluted and complex. It is a holdover from the days when
the NSA, for security reasons, was broken into dozens of sealed-off
compartments. Each bought its own computers, developed its own
software and built its own networks, intentionally cut off from the
rest of the organization.

Gen. Hayden now wants to open the place up, at least internally.
Whoever wins the Groundbreaker contract will have to meld the current
mess into one seamless network, so that for the first time the agency
can move around top-secret files as any company would, but without
fear of an external security breach.

None of the technology involved will directly touch the NSAs core
computers, which cull millions of intercepted communications from
around the world. But the hope is that by privatizing its other
systems, the NSA can become a better spy organization, drawing on the
full talents of its until-now highly balkanized staff.

If Groundbreaker succeeds, industry experts predict it could set off a
wave of other big outsourcing deals within the federal government.
Likely next candidates include the departments of Energy and Defense,
and even the Central Intelligence Agency. This will set the standard
for how all similar deals proceed, says Thomas Robinson, president of
CSCs Defense Group, which is leading one team that also includes
General Dynamics and Verizon Communications Inc. The leaders of the
other two competing consortia are AT&T and OAO.

Yet not all government partnerships with the private sector have
turned out well. In the late 1980s, the Federal Aviation
Administration hired an IBM division to design an upgraded air-traffic
control system. The project was all but abandoned in 1994, at a loss
of more than $500 million. The FAA, now set to link up with Lockheed
Martin Corp., still hasnt solved the problems with its antiquated
computers.

For the companies, getting the NSA technology to work may be the least
of the challenges. They also will have to grapple with the agencys
ultrasecret culture and 750 high-security employees, ranging from age
17 to 75, who now tend the technology in-house. Many of them will
simply switch badges, returning to the NSA as an employee of whoever
wins the bid. But opposition still runs high for veterans trained for
years to be suspicious of all outsiders.

The NSA has always been intensely proud of its technological and
computing prowess. Specialists in its sprawling headquarters at Ft.
Meade, Md., helped design the agencys supercomputers and for years
have set the standard for high-tech eavesdropping equipment. For many
of them, Groundbreaker is an admission of defeat: proof that the
commercial world, at least regarding office-computer and e-mail
systems, has left them in the dust. Whoever wins the job will find
more than a few attitude problems, says one longtime NSA employee, who
declined to be identified. Spirits are not exactly soaring right now.

The companies will also have to meet security standards far beyond
those of the most security-conscious private-sector companies. The
NSAs very existence was a secret for decades. Posters on the cafeteria
walls warn: No Classified Talk! Employees kids or spouses arent
allowed to visit, except on prearranged days once every five years.
Every computer, telephone, and scrap of software introduced into the
NSA during the Groundbreaker project will be scrubbed for bugs that
could expose the agency to spies. Harry Gatanas, the NSAs recently
hired chief of procurement, says the NSA will remain as rigid as ever
about its security standards.

The companies still arent sure what fireworks they will face on the
personnel side, but all acknowledge that it will be delicate work. CSC
last year handled what up to now has been the largest movement of
government computer workers into the private sector when it took on a
$683 million project to privatize the Armys inventory-control system.
That involved only 210 people. Still, it provoked a union uproar,
protests by some members of Congress and a legal challenge that
dragged on for months.

CSCs solution was a soft-landing package that gave every Army employee
who made the leap a $15,000 signing bonus as well as measures to
assure no one would lose out on retirement packages or vacation pay.
All but a few signed on. The winner of Groundbreaker is expected to
offer a similar cushion.

But wooing the NSA workers could prove a lot tougher. Most of the
employees set for transfer are agency lifers (average age, 41). Since
last summer, when Groundbreaker was first floated, Gen. Hayden and the
companies competing for the deal have held more than a dozen
question-and-answer sessions with anxious staff in the NSAs main
auditorium. Mr. Gatanas acknowledges that few are keen to make the
shift. But these chats, he says, have taken the edge off the
discontent.

The upshot is that the winning consortium is sure to shoulder huge
personnel costs, leading some industry analysts to predict that
Groundbreaker could deliver more prestige than profit.

But the winner will get something else: more than 1,750 employees,
including 1,000 private contractors, with built-in security
clearances. Around Washington, those are sometimes better than gold.

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