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Technology Stocks : LOCKHEED MARTIN, (LMT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jimbo Cobb who wrote (468)	12/14/1998 2:56:00 PM
From: Shawn M. Downey	Respond to of 732

Lockheed May Appeal Loss Of IRS Contract (12/13/98, 2:46 p.m. ET) By Tim Scannell, Computer Reseller News Representatives from Lockheed Martin will sit down Friday with the Internal Revenue Service to discuss details on why it lost out on a bid to update the agency's outdated computer system. Depending on the outcome of the discussion, Lockheed may file an appeal to reopen the bidding process and, as a result, delay the project, which is scheduled to begin soon after Jan 1. The contract, estimated at nearly $8 billion, was awarded to integrator Computer Sciences (CSC). The multibillion dollar IRS contract calls for a complete revamp of a system that is pretty much based on 1960s technology, according to the IRS. Goals include improving Internet access to IRS customer-service representatives, expanding the system's ability to handle electronic tax filings, and designing a new generation of workstations that speed up internal records retrieval and beef up security. An IRS spokesman and member companies of the CSC's integration team declined to specify exactly what technologies would be used in the project. All of this should be more clearly defined after an initial six-month "start-up" period, said the IRS. A spokesman for KPMG Peat Marwick, a consultant and member of the CSC Prime Alliance group, said the 15-year project will involve a "radical departure" to transform the system into one that is more "customer-centric." The CSC team will, however, stick closely to modernization guidelines defined last year by IRS commissioner Charles Rossotti as part of the Prime Systems Integration Services blueprint. Rossotti previously was chairman of American Management Systems. The CSC-IRS deal is considered to be the largest outsourcing contract in history, and one of the first to involve such a wide range of large companies in the process. Players on the CSC team include IBM, Northrop Grumman, Unisys, Science Applications International, KPMG, and Lucent Technologies. Observers said the grouping may mark a new trend in which multiple companies team up to present a unified front to a client. Similar consortium efforts have taken place outside the United States. These include a 10-year contract to upgrade the British government's social security system, won late this year by the Affinity Consortium, a group of companies that includes IBM, Electronic Data Systems, and Price Waterhouse. EDS and others also are involved in Transys, a $1.6 billion project to update the ticketing system for London Transport.