USAF officials continue plans to modernize GPS

Through the years, the Global Positioning System has become one of the most widely-used Air Force applications. Today GPS is used in everything from farming and aviation to public safety, disaster relief and recreation, not to mention its military purpose of providing precision navigation and timing to combat forces. This dependence requires a keen focus on maintaining and modernizing the system. Air Force officials took the next step in that process when they awarded a contract last month to Raytheon Company for the Next Generation GPS Control Segment, commonly referred to as OCX. “OCX is the new ground system that will replace our current Architecture Evolution Plan ground system,” said the 2nd Space Operations Squadron commander. “OCX is critical for us as we cannot fly GPS III satellites with our current ground system.” The OCX development contract is set to last 73 months with option years for sustainment worth about $1.5 billion. The contract will include development and installation of hardware and software at GPS control stations here and at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., deployment of advanced monitor stations at remote sites and initial contractor support with sustainment options for five years. “The new OCX ground system will bring more automation and combine AEP and our Launch Anomaly and Disposal Operations system into one ground system eliminating the need for dual certifications,” she said. The new ground system also will allow for command and control of an additional number of satellites. “OCX is also meant to fly up to 64 satellites where our current AEP system can only fly up to 32 satellites,” she said.

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first published week of:   03/29/2010

Virginia's IT outage doesn't pass management sniff test

t has been a rough few days for anyone interacting with the state of Virginia following an IT outage that affected 26 state agencies. Can a storage area networking failure really cripple a state’s IT systems?

Virginia’s IT infrastructure, which is managed by Northrop Grumman, has led to a few statements from agencies. Notably, Virginia’s Department of Motor Vehicles hasn’t been able to process requests for licenses and ID cards. These systems are supposed to be up and running on Tuesday, six days after the outages started to appear.

Meanwhile, the Virginia Information Technologies Agency (VITA) said in a statement that teams have been working throughout the weekend to restore data. In a nutshell, the IT infrastructure of the state of Virginia was reportedly crushed by an EMC storage area network failure. Specifically, the EMC DMX-3 was behind the hardware failure.

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first published week of:   08/30/2010

White House official advises on open-government plans

The open-government plans that agencies must publish by April 7 shouldn’t be used to specify programs that improve transparency but instead outline a series of goals related to open government, said a White House official who is directing the effort.

Agencies should view the plans as a road map that shows where they are now and where they would like to go in terms of transparency, said Robynn Sturm, assistant deputy chief technology officer for open government at the Office of Science and Technology Policy.

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first published week of:   02/22/2010

White House preparing agency IT project hit list
Administration wants tighter reins on $20 billion in IT infrastructure spending for fiscal 2012

The White House plans to publish a list of high-risk information technology projects as part of the Obama administration’s effort to rein in $20 billion of annual IT infrastructure spending, according to Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra.

The high-risk IT project list will include projects that are over budget and behind schedule, as well as those that have veered off course from their initial requirements, Kundra said at the NASA IT Summit conference in National Harbor, Md.

The White House’s goal is to turn around those troubled projects in the fiscal 2012 budget process, he said. Agency requests for the fiscal 2012 budget year are currently being assembled, and President Barack Obama is scheduled to present the request to Congress in February 2011.

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first published week of:   08/23/2010

Volume 31

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