Intercepts

MORE AMC OUTSOURCING? The Army Materiel Command, still struggling to overcome Capitol Hill opposition against plans to outsource roughly 800 software engineering jobs, has an even broader initiative under review, according to AMC's commander, Gen. Johnnie Wilson.

Wilson, speaking at a logistics conference in Washington, D.C., last week, said AMC plans to cut its civilian staff to 47,000 from 58,000.

Wilson added that AMC also has a "major study" to outsource or privatize 34,000 of those jobs. My Pentagon Mall Entrance remote unit has picked up strong signals that the Army high command has decided that this outsourcing effort involves far more than a mere study and has stood up a very 1998 Over-arching Integrated Product Team (OIPT) to oversee the whole thing. That's comforting.

Because Wilson probably has command of installations in more congressional districts -- 75 in 42 states -- than any four-star in the Pentagon, action on the study probably will occur very slowly.

Speaking of the political fealties of his position, Wilson, in a bit of masterful understatement, said, "I spend a great deal of my time on the Hill being counseled and guided."

NEW AMC CIO FROM DISA. Wilson also told the Interceptor that he has selected a candidate for a new AMC chief information officer, but he declined to identify the individual.

However, I'm picking up medium-strength signals that someone at the Defense Information Systems Agency HQ bunker on Courthouse Road has decided to make the leap to AMC, but I have not quite zero-ed in on the likely candidate.

This bit of info should make for an interesting Monday morning on Courthouse Road.

OIPT-ING THE NETS: The ASD/C3I office has launched its own OIPT to examine Defense Department network policy and the desire for the military services to have better control of their own network destiny. Marv Langston, DOD's deputy CIO, said his OIPT squad should finish the network review sometime in February.

This is probably not at the speed at which CINCPACFLT Adm. Archie Clemins would like to proceed -- he wants to build, not simply study, a worldwide intranet for DOD in a year -- but it's lightning-fast for the Pentagon, where process always comes before progress.

Now that OIPT seems to have entered the language as a noun, a verb and an adjective, I believe we need to come up with the correct pronunciation for the acronym.

The Interceptor welcomes suggestions at antenna@fcw.com.

CUSTOMER SERVICE? A nasty fight between BTG Inc. and Government Technology Services Inc. over warranty responsibility for the Army PC-2 contract has surfaced on the Army Small Computer Program World Wide Web page (pmscp.monmouth.army.mil).

In order to "ease the transition process" following a February agreement to transfer performance on many BTG contracts to GTSI, GTSI agreed to perform warranty service on the computers that BTG sold to the Army before February, according to a letter from Joel Lipkin, vice president of business development at GTSI.

But, Lipkin wrote, BTG has given GTSI only "token payment," and as of Oct. 30, GTSI dumped warranty responsibility back on BTG for any computer sold by BTG on PC-2 prior to February.

What's an Army user with a bum hard drive to do? Lipkin, in his letter, suggested that users call BTG chairman and chief executive officer Ed Bersoff directly, and he kindly provided Bersoff's phone number.

I think we need an OIPT on this one.