FOSE Reaches Past Cool Technology
Trade Show's Aim Is to Help Complex Government Systems Work Efficiently
By Anitha Reddy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 22, 2004; Page E04
FOSE, the big annual government technology bazaar at the Washington Convention Center that begins tomorrow, may be a trade show paid for by companies trying to sell technology to the government. But what goes on there is more or less a crash course in how blindingly complex government technology procurement has become.
Except for a few keynote corporate speakers, FOSE is nearly three solid days of roundtables, speeches and policy addresses by agency contracting czars and chief information officers.
And while cool gear is always on display at FOSE, what most of these officials talk about is the government's massive need to build better networks for sharing and gaining access to information.
The emphasis away from "stuff" toward systems has been underway for years, but will be especially pronounced at this year's FOSE, say contractors and organizers. Some of the biggest technology contracts underway are more about designing networked systems, not about the computers that run on them.
That's because government technology projects today are more about making sure databases and systems aren't isolated but can share information. High-profile fiascos involving pricey technology of the last 10 years have taught contracting officers one thing: The coolest gizmos don't guarantee that the government will be able to mail out Social Security checks any faster. Or selectively share classified information. Or access a variety of databases.
Government officials will see "the hottest, coolest stuff in the market" at FOSE, said Anne Altman, the head of International Business Machine Corp.'s U.S. government practice. "But just because it's hot and really nifty and cool and gets the juices flowing for the techno-geeks, doesn't mean that's where the agency will start" its shopping list, she said.
FOSE, which began in 1976 with rows of photocopiers and mainframe computers, now devotes more than 50 percent of its space to companies selling consulting services, said Bill Howell, general manager of FOSE for 10 years.
The trade show is owned by a division of The Washington Post Co.
Government agencies are still working out the problems created by years of disparate technology decisions inside and between departments. The Navy Marine Corps Intranet contract is a massive system design project being undertaken by Electronic Data Systems Corp. to finally put the Navy on one e-mail system.
Haphazard technology spending was exacerbated by the government's early tendency to select products based on their price. That began to change 10 years ago, according to David Drabnik, deputy associate administrator for acquisition policy at the General Services Administration.
Drabnik said the lowest-price mindset began to change during President Bill Clinton's second term when Defense Secretary William J. Perry went to Congress and argued that always paying the lowest price cost more in the long run because cheap products had to be repaired more frequently or retired earlier.
The federal government's steadily rising information technology budget makes a change in attitude even more important, said Bill Gormley, chief executive of Federal Sources Inc., a research firm in McLean. Uncle Sam buys more technology than anyone else in the world. This year, the U.S. government is slated to spend $59.3 billion, up from $25.8 in 1994, according to Federal Sources.
As communication and data sharing become more important, and computer systems become more complex, low sticker prices are misleading for even more reasons, Drabnik said. For example, government agencies would often underestimate how much it cost to train employees on the latest purchase, or to link a new database to an existing network.
Now that officials such as Drabnik have spent years teaching government buyers about hidden costs, contractors are stressing those lessons as well, Howell said.
For instance, DigitalPersona Inc., a Redwood City, Calif., company that makes fingerprint scanners that control access to computers, deliberately designed its devices to work with a common Microsoft program which was already being used by the Defense Department.
That made the scanners easier to install, said Harvey Bondar, DigitalPersona's vice president of marketing. It was a key factor in the department's decision to use the scanners on 1,300 computers in conjunction with ID cards, he said.
"For many technologies you spend $199 to buy the technology and then some percent over that to install and manage them," Bondar said. Cutting down those extra costs is "really where value is created," he added.
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