Defense wins purchasing honors

Standard Procurement System Web site

A pair of Defense Department acquisition programs won awards for using technology to improve efficiency and service.

Grace Hopper Government Technology Leadership awards were given this week to

the Standard Procurement System (SPS), expected to eventually replace 76 procurement systems used across DOD, and the Federal Technical Data Solution (Fedteds), a Web-based system that allows acquisition professionals to securely provide sensitive, but unclassified, acquisition information to vendors.

The Grace Hopper Awards, from the Council for Excellence in Government and Government Executive magazine, honor projects that directly aid the missions of federal organizations by boosting efficiency and effectiveness, lowering costs and improving service to the public through original uses of technology. The award is named in honor of the Navy's late computer expert Rear Adm. Grace Hopper, who led the service into the computer age. Hopper died in 1992.

SPS won in the category of "Breaking Down Barriers between Offices, Agencies and Departments, or between Federal, State, and Local Governments." SPS is deployed in each of the military services and to 13 departmental agencies, reaching more than 23,000 users.

Fedteds won in the category of "Addressing Privacy and Security Concerns." It is now a part of the Homeland Security Department, General Services Administration and several other federal agencies through the federal eGov Integrated Acquisition Environment initiative.