An unhappy IT marriage ends - state and Northrop Grumman split at midnight Friday

By MICHAEL MARTZ Richmond Times-Dispatch Aug 16, 2018

At midnight Friday, the split will be final between the Virginia Information Technologies Agency and Northrop Grumman, the company the state hired 13 years ago to equip and run a vast information technology network for state government. ... The state’s new partner, Science Applications International Corp., or SAIC, will take control of a system that serves 63 state agencies and more than 56,000 state employees — data centers, operations and security centers, servers, personal computers, telephones, everything.

“This is a new era in IT services for state agencies and VITA,” said Nelson Moe, Virginia’s chief information officer and director of VITA, as the state technology agency is known.

Unwinding a 13-year, $2.4 billion contract hasn’t been easy, and it’s still not over. The state and Northrop Grumman have bills to settle — the state owes an estimated $67 million for ending the contract almost 10 months early — and a date in Richmond Circuit Court on Aug. 30 to resolve dueling lawsuits over contractual obligations.

But the operational responsibilities will end for Northrop Grumman, based in Fairfax County with 8,000 employees in various corporate enterprises across Virginia.
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mmartz@timesdispatch.com (804) 649-6964