Intercepts

FIRST INITIAL

* Sayonara WWMCCS. Look for DISA to finally turn off the World Wide Military Command and Control System within the next week with the Global Command and Control System taking over from the aging mainframe-based command and control system said DISA director Lt. Gen. Al Edmonds speaking at last week's AFCEA Database confab in San Diego. This will accomplish two great things for the republic: provide DOD with an advanced C2 system and forever banish from the pages of Federal Computer Week one of the worst acronyms ever hatched.

* Competition works. The deregulated telecom environment has started to pay off big time for DISA according to Edmonds who said the agency has received bids for transmission circuits "40 percent below what we are paying today." Does this include the $100 check for switching carriers?

* Air Force C4 confusion. Edmonds confirmed reports that there's turmoil at the top in the Air Force over computer and C4 management. Responding to a question from the AFCEA audience about the fate of the Air Force SC widget organization Edmonds said the "Air Force has a problem [with] different people in charge of C4.... The chief [Air Force chief of staff Gen. Ronald Fogleman] is looking at the whole staff structure." According to reports received here at Intercept Central this could include stripping Lt. Gen. John Fairfield the AF C4 boss of a lot of the new organizational toys he has picked up during the past few months.

* DMS due diligence. Diann McCoy the new DISA D2 has spent the first few weeks on the job focusing on the Defense Message System "looking at the architecture and pilot sites...[to see] if we have the right kind of capabilities." McCoy said this scrutiny does not reflect serious concerns on her part but rather "where DMS is in the life cycle." DMS fielding has missed its original dates resulting in program manager Tom Clarke declining to set any new ones preferring to call the program "event-driven." McCoy came up with a new buzzword for the DMS schedule: "criteria-based." They're sure deep into taxonomy over at DISA.

* JITC revolving door? I'm picking up medium-strength signals that a high-level JITC staffer plans to exit the organization soon for a job with Validity Corp. Validity recently won a humongous contract to support the operation and management of JITC including the palatial test center at Fort Huachuca. Hmm...there's a certain synchronicity at work here.

* Very mellow MCI. The Interceptor had a hard time tracking down any top MCI exec last Thursday for comment on the company's win of the DISN Switched/Bandwidth Manager Services contract. MCI Government poo-bah Jerry Edgerton was "unavailable " while MCI Defense honcho Diana Gowen was in Dubrovnik Croatia. Instead of spending last week worrying about the contract Gowen decided to spend her 30th wedding anniversary with her husband an Army officer stationed in Zagreb. MCI takes this friends and family stuff seriously.