Justice CIO Hitch details agenda for fiscal 2006
Connecting state and local government leaders
The FBI's Sentinel Case Management system is one of many initiatives Vance Hitch and a staff of 350 IT employees are trying to push forward.
The FBI's Sentinel Case Management system may be the Justice Department's highest profile IT project, but for Justice CIO Vance Hitch, it is just one of the many initiatives he and a staff of 350 full-time IT employees are trying to push forward in the new fiscal year.
Acknowledging that DOJ's IT efforts haven't advanced as quickly as he had hoped when he joined the department 3 1/2 years ago, Hitch highlighted more than a dozen initiatives on which he said Justice is making headway. Among those are the department's enterprise network implementation, called JUTNet, its IWN wireless network program and its law enforcement information sharing program (LEISP/One DOJ).
JUTNet, which is being implemented now and will be rolled out across the department within another year, is 'a success story of technology paying for itself,' particularly as an enabler of IT security, Hitch said, speaking yesterday at an industry forum held by Reston, Va.-based Input Inc.
Hitch also highlighted how consortia of state and local law enforcement agents are taking advantage of the department's recent work with national and regional digital exchanges. The National Data Exchange allows agents to capture and share standardized incident data, while the Regional Data Exchange facilitates intelligence analysis.
On another front, Justice expects to announce contract awards in 'the next couple months' for a new wireless network, with a 'possibility for multiple designs' to allow the integration of competing technologies that would also work with state and local law enforcement groups, Hitch said.
Meanwhile, Justice has opened up 127 inherently commercial federal IT positions Dallas and in Rockville, Md., to competition with the private sector under Office of Management and Budget Circular A-76. The agency announced the competitive sourcing study last week at FedBizOpps.gov.
The Operations Support staff at these two locations provide system design and engineering support, network administration, mainframe and server administration, data center operations, project planning, project management, specialized application support, help desk services, capacity and contingency planning, system and network security, and security management and support.
Justice also is competing work done by contract staff in this competitive sourcing competition, but the notice did not say how many contract staff this includes.
Justice will conduct a single acquisition for these services under the standard competition procedures of A-76 and plans to complete it by November 2006, the notice said. Standard competitions use the best-value approach where agencies write a statement of work, develop their in-house bid and compete it against the private sector.