Air Force mandates buying system

The Air Force adopted an Air Combat Command system Tuesday as a mandatory program for purchasing PCs and services.

Lawrence Delaney, the acting Air Force secretary, agreed Tuesday to make Air Force Way (AFWay) mandatory, said Lt. Gen. John Woodward, the service's deputy chief information officer. "In the end, it's gonna be mandatory," he said.

The Commercial Information Technology Product Area Directorate at Gunter Annex on Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., will manage AFWay, Woodward said. Delaney will probably issue a policy letter within a month, he said.

Woodward also said that Air Force officials are adopting some business practices used in the Navy Marine Corps Intranet outsourcing procurement. The service now has service-level agreements with the Defense Information Systems Agency, for example, to cover voice, video and data services that DISA provides, he said.

Under the Navy's service-level agreements with Electronic Data Systems Corp., the company would get financially punished if it fails to meet the agreements, which cover areas such as information security and network uptime.

"We are watching it closely," Woodward said of NMCI. "If anything comes out of it, we'll act on it."