Well, the Governor, (a darling of Time Magazine) has signed the IT outsourcing agreement with Northrup-Grumman (that was the non news since he initiated the bidding).  But the story changes once again.  At first it was 1200 then it went to 2400 then to 7000 people affected.  The latest is now only about 900-950 that will be affected.

The outsourcing has some really big plums (which makes me wonder how either Northrup is going to make money or the state is going to save money).  One is in Southwest Virginia, more commonly known as Appalachia for those not familiar with the area.  So that is very good as a lot of high tech jobs will be going to a depressed area.  Of course, they have to get the qualified people out there, but if you have ever visited the area, you would love it!  So hopefully that will not be hard.

Another plum gets placed into a bedroom community of Richmond.  The county is ecstatic, but this is not going to be a big deal for them (considering local unemployment is down around 3% - maybe Chaos Manager can snag one of those positions!), even tho they are playing it up as the next coming of the Messiah.

And for the 950 current state employees offered a job with Northrup?  The article states that they will be offered a signing bonus, a 4% salary increase, and vested time with the state moved over for the same time with Northrup.  A sweet deal for any state employee considering the last time they saw a 4% raise was - maybe 1988?

Several things, not stated, have made me realize the 'fix was in' for Northrup.  Since this was an RFP, the lowest bidder did not have to win, and one of the "fixes" was a major deal breaker for IBM.  It seems they wanted to move the SW Va. operation to New York (the joke was we send NY money, they send us garbage - literally).  So that really hamstrung IBM.  The second, and this I did not know until I read this article, is that Northrup owns the Newport News Shipyards!  Just the largest non-government employer in the state! (It has changed hands so many times, I lost track).  So Northrup already has a huge presence here in Va, and the State would like to keep them happy!

So when all is said and done, not much looks to change much except - where's the money?  Northrup is not going to do this Gratis!  They expect to make some big bucks.  So I see some (maybe not a lot) of attrition or higher IT prices for Virginia. Not being privy to the t-charts of state spending, I dont know which it will be (but if they can run IT better than VITA does, I figure they will pick up some change right there).  We will see.

If this works, maybe Warner might be a pretty good president if he can do it to the feds as well.

The last statement was a joke!  Like anyone is going to privatize the feds?