Tuesday 1 May 2012

Will it be tears before bedtime for Australian Governments lured by SAIC's siren song?


SAIC Pty Ltd is a wholly owned subsidiary of Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) registered in Queensland since 1990 and located in Brisbane, Canberra and Melbourne. Ii appears to do business with the Commonwealth and state governments.

According to IT News For Business on 16 April 2012 SAIC has plans:

Science Applications International Corporation has revealed plans to create a regional cyber security research and development centre in Melbourne.
The R&D centre will create 50 jobs over the next three years, according to a statement by the Victorian State Government.
The jobs will be in the areas including high-end defence simulation and "related defence areas".
Specifically, the centre will research data mining and analysis systems, such as SIAC's enterprise search tool TeraText, and its subsidiary's deep packet inspection software, CloudShield……
SAIC has an existing office presence in Queensland and Victoria, and 41,000 employees worldwide.

Then there was this potted history of the corporation in The Washington Post on 22 April 2012:

Last week in these pages, The Post ran a profile of John Jumper, the straight arrow former Air Force general who was brought in as chief executive of local contracting giant SAIC in the wake of an embarrassing overbilling scandal involving bribery, kickbacks, foreign shell corporations and a safe deposit box stuffed with $850,000 in cash.
A year ago company officials were publicly denying that there were any problems at all with its contract to build a new timecard system for New York City, which by then was so late and so over budget that “CityTime” had become a frequent target for the New York tabloids and political embarrassment for Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
It was just last June that SAIC executives and directors first informed shareholders that there might be a little $2.5 million overbilling problem with the contract and that federal prosecutors had brought criminal charges against six employees of an SAIC subcontractor. Shareholders had to read deep into Note 9 of that quarterly report to learn that there might be “a reasonable possibility of additional exposure to loss that is not currently estimable” that “could have a material adverse impact” on the company’s finances.
It was just six months ago that SAIC got around to firing the three executives who were supposed to oversee the New York operations and letting shareholders know that the board of directors had formed a special committee and hired a couple of law firms to get to the bottom of things.
And it was a month ago that SAIC, acknowledging its responsibility in failing to detect a bribery and kickback conspiracy going on right under its corporate nose, agreed to repay the city $500 million of the $635 million it had received for the completed CityTime system. The settlement will allow SAIC to avoid criminal prosecution and the almost certain debarment from government contracting work that would follow.
Now with the appointment of a new chief executive, SAIC wants to assure everyone that the problems have been fixed and that the company has regained its “entrepreneurial spirit” and returned to its “core values.”……

This is what SAIC told the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Infrastructure and Communications in a submission on 19 February 2011:

Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) was founded in 1969 by Dr. J.Robert Beyster on the premise of attracting creative and pragmatic technical people to solve the world’s most difficult problems. Today it is a diversified technical company with business in energy, health, national security, environment, and critical infrastructure. SAIC’s 43,000 personnel are committed to meeting the needs of our customers and growing technology markets. The company is headquartered in McLean, Virginia, and we have business operations in Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory, and Queensland among other locations around the world.
Since the 1990s, SAIC has been involved in high-speed networking and high performance computing initiatives, and through our “spun out” subsidiaries (i.e., Network Solutions, Telcordia, ANXeBusiness, etc.) we participated in the growth of the Internet into its now critical place in global communication, economic, social and information infrastructure. As the Internet has grown, we have worked to develop applications that leverage these capabilities to help government improve service delivery (including eGovernment, education, etc.), and help critical infrastructure industries (energy, health, etc.) enhance their effectiveness. SAIC has also been a leader in the rapid development and integration of cybersecurity systems and components that have become required underpinning frameworks for the expansion of these large scale network architectures.

While this is what Pogo.org is telling the world on its Federal Contractor Misconduct Database:

SAIC (Science Applications International Corporation) is a scientific, engineering and technology applications company. It works extensively with the U.S. Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, and the intelligence agencies. Founded by J. Robert Beyster, Ph.D., and a small group of scientists in 1969, SAIC and its subsidiaries now have approximately 41,000 employees worldwide.
Federal Contract $: $6861.6m
Total Number of Instances: 13
Total Misconduct dollar amount: $ 533.3m

Can Australian governments afford this corporation?

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