Whats more Age: 51
Last movies seen: Star Wars trilogy and Air Force One
Military service: Air Force from 1969 to 1978; now a colonel in the Air Force Reserve
Personal hero: My father, Fred Frye, who said, Whatever job you have, do it as well as it can be done, and Remember the people you go by on the way up the ladder are the same ones you go by on the way down.
Sports: Avid golfer and racquetball player GCN: The Standard Systems Group started its fee-for-service work in 1993. How has it changed how SSG operates?
FRYE: Its focused us and our contractors more on the customer-supplier relationship. In the fee-for-service environment, if the customer doesnt buy your product, you dont have a job. That has forced us to be more innovative and reactive to the customers needs.
We made the transition well, but we need to reduce our overhead or our customers will take their business elsewhere. Our surcharge on our indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contracts this year is 1.66 percent. Next year, it drops to 1.06 percent. That reflects the way weve reduced overhead.
We dont need as many people to handle paperwork because were using Web pages for ordering.
One of the big advantages of online ordering is the configuration checker, which ensures that customers configure systems right. They cant order a system that doesnt work. When they ordered on paper, we used to have to verify that it would work. In a lot of instances, it wouldnt.
Our other services include an around-the-clock help desk that handles worldwide calls. We do remote network and systems administration. We do software distribution, configuration management and software development. We run the Air Force Network Operations Center.
We have probably up to 50 percent of total information services activity, counting our sister organization, the Materiel Assistance Group at Dayton, Ohio. If you look at our total expense, about half of it is outsourced.
I think we have a mature software testing organization. We do some of it with in-house resources and some with contractors. We tend to do whatever is most cost-effective, and its not always cost-effective to use contractors.
GCN: Have IMPAC credit cards reduced your paperwork for small orders?
FRYE: Its been a substantial paperwork reducer.
[Between October 1997 and early this month, SSG processed $171.7 million, or nearly 80 percent of its $215.4 million total purchases, through IMPAC credit card and Web orders.]
GCN: How are you planning to make integration for command, control, communications, computers and intelligence more popular with buyers?
FRYE: The transitions going well. The contractors [BTG Inc. of Fairfax, Va., Tracor Inc. of Austin, Texas, and SRA International Inc. of Arlington, Va.] and my staff are streamlining the time and effort to execute delivery orders.
A good example is our joint effort to set up Web-based ordering on IC4I. Its pretty early, but we did about $5 million in sales [in the first seven weeks]. Weve got to win the customers confidence that we can deliver products and services in a timely manner.
GCN: Where do you see SSG going with blanket purchasing agreements vs. indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contracts?
FRYE: BPAs are one more tool in the kit. Theyre the answer to several of our commercial information technology needs, but not all. In some instances, were going to have to do our own IDIQ. Were going to look at acquisition strategy for each contract on a case-by-case basis.
With an IDIQ, you can specify exactly the terms and conditions and needs. You can do a lot better best-value analyses and trade-offs if you have unique requirements. You cant use a BPA if there are any terms and conditions incompatible with the General Services Administration schedule.
GCN: Do you think you will have difficulty getting the same discounts as on the current Desktop V contracts?
FRYE: I dont think so. If we buy only desktops from one contract, instead of everything from soup to nuts, more [vendors] may be able to play because theyd only have to be able to make the right desktop PCs. Whereas before, they had to make servers, desktops, laptops and different things.
GCN: What about the Unified LAN Architecture II and other contracts youre managing?
FRYE: ULANA II is a key contract providing services and equipment to the Defense Department. Almost 50 percent of orders have come from non-Air Force customers. The Army and Defense Logistics Agency and other services were part of the source selection way back when. They always planned to use the contract. It was as much of an Army and DOD contract as it was an Air Force contract.
GCN: Aside from ULANA II, hows business with non-Air Force agencies?
FRYE: Roughly 12 percent of our Desktop V orders come from non-Air Force customers. Remember that the Army and Navy are prohibited from using Desktop V. That 12 percent comes from DLA and civilian agencies.
About 40 percent of IC4I orders are from non-Air Force agencies. The BPAs that we recently let to Dell Computer Corp. and Micron Electronics Inc. [of Nampa, Idaho] are Air Force-only.
GCN: Why is that?
FRYE: The restriction was placed on us. If you make a BPA departmentwide, its almost the same as a GSA schedule.
GCN: Ive heard that the five-year, worldwide, on-site warranties are popular on Desktop V.
FRYE: Exactly. Thats why I think the combination, where we use BPAs to supplement Desktop V, will work well.
GCN: Did you change your IDIQ strategy because of the protests of Desktop IV and V and the problems you had when Zenith Data Systems was bought by Packard Bell NEC Inc. of Westlake Village, Calif.?
FRYE: I cant remember any time when the Desktop buys werent protested. Anytime you have a contract of substantial size in todays environment, it is almost impossible not to have a protest.
The main reason is supposed to be that you think the agency that made the source selection did something wrong. Its my view that a lot of source selections are protested for business reasons.
If Im supposed to award a contract in April or May and have end-of-year funding available and you have a big GSA schedule contract, you protest my award so that its not available for end-of-year ordering. You might bring substantially more business to your GSA schedule contract.
GCN: Can anything be done about that?
FRYE: No. I cant say for a fact thats what people do. But there may be business reasons.
GCN: What are you doing about software licensing? The Air Force Materiel Command and other Air Force agencies are trying it to save money.
FRYE: Were very much involved with AFMC and others in volume buys of licenses. AFMC recently announced a volume buy of Oracle Corp. database management system and tool software off one of our contracts, [the Integrated Computer-Aided Software Engineering contract held by Logicon Inc. of Torrance, Calif.].
AFMC saved money on all the licenses it already had. I think theres a lot more that the Air Force needs to look at.
Anywhere theres a popular product and a large number of users, it makes sense to consolidate and save money on quantity discounts.
If I have Oracle out there and everyone is buying their own individual licenses, how many different versions do I have? If I do a volume buy, I can centrally control the distribution and maintenance of licenses and keep track of the version numbers running at all locations. You cant make that happen when everyones doing their own thing.
Every major command is looking at volume buys as well as whether we should set a standard for the entire command. Theyre also looking at outsourcing and letting the contractor do the licensing. Theres a lot of discussion at the major command level and the Air Force level.
It makes sense that the different commands deploy tools that work together.
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