IBM Suspended From US Federal Contracts 136
theodp writes "IBM has been temporarily banned from receiving future contracts with federal agencies, the Environmental Protection Agency confirmed on Monday. The suspension went into effect last Thursday due to 'concerns raised about potential activities involving an EPA procurement,' the agency said in an e-mailed statement. Under a reciprocal agreement among federal agencies, when one issues a ban, the others follow it. The EPA said it will not comment further on the matter. An IBM spokesman said he had no immediate comment. 'You don't see this very often, particularly for large companies,' commented a stunned industry analyst, mentioning a bankrupt MCI as a notable exception. IBM earned an estimated $1.5 billion in revenue from federal prime contracts in fiscal 2007."
Hmmm (Score:2)
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Except that there are a lot of supporting links. Hmmm. Sucks bigtime if It's true though. Hopefully the "temporary" is as "temporary" as it can be.
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For IBM, sure. For taxpayers
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Trust me - they are all trainwrecks-for-hire.
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Basically, the EPA thinks IBM ripped it off some way or another.
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http://money.cnn.com/2008/04/01/technology/bc.na.fin.us.ibm.contract.ap/index.htm?postversion=2008040118 [cnn.com]
The gist is that IBM protested an $84 million financial modernization project awarded to some other consultant, CGI, and the GAO had still not made a decision, although the research firm Fed Sources earlier reported the GAO upheld IBM's complaint.
The EPA last week temporarily banned IBM from receiving any new government contract
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Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Funny)
Apparently, Slashdot is skipping April Fools this year, along with the rest of the U.S. Details later today, hopefully.
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Well, it's April 2nd in the U.S. anyway. Just in case they don't run the story, here's a link [slashdot.org] to the Firehose entry.
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The first thing I saw when I unblocked ads was a long animated banner for something called "Splunk".
The second thing I saw was myself re-enabling ABP pronto.
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The gag this year is that they're only posting real stories, that sound so ridiculous that we assume they're jokes!
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What I suspect is that EPA blew a whistle without realizing that - due to this agreement in place between federal agencies - it would cut IBM out of new federal work altogether. That's almost certainly overkill - no one wants to take one of the major players out of the game just beca
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What I suspect is that EPA blew a whistle without realizing that - due to this agreement in place between federal agencies - it would cut IBM out of new federal work altogether. That's almost certainly overkill - no one wants to take one of the major players out of the game just because of corruption at tiny, inconsequential EPA (sorry guys, but EPA is a very small fish in federal government).
They just got new management, one Russ Cargill. Just be glad they didn't decide to blow up IBM headquarters.
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Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
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They apparently missed their payments, and you know the ones I'm talking about.
Bwaaaa? (Score:1)
Is this the day of actual stories that look like April fools stories but aren't, or am I still too dense?
No Joke? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:No Joke? (Score:4, Funny)
Come on, this government, cracking down on corruption by a US company?
April Fools! (Score:2)
Worth it for the look on the IBM salesman's face.
And justified by all the crap tools they sell to my management for me to support.
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Did IBM refuse to go along w/ Illegal Gov't Spies? (Score:2)
I don't know which is more surprising.... (Score:2)
The government spends a fortune on IT, I can't imagine a company as large as IBM not having a bigger piece of the pie. Perhaps they don't pay Congress enough during elections?
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My guess is that that is 1.5 Billion profit. Earnings are generally after expenses.
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http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/23785.wss [ibm.com]
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Tags (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, this story was just tagged !omgponies, but that tag is gone now. Ugh.
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Re:Tags (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Tags (Score:5, Funny)
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And thanks to the omgponies firefox plugin, it's the only one I get.
Re:Tags (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Tags (Score:5, Informative)
I googled and turned up this random mirror of the
http://onaserver.org/omgponies/ [onaserver.org]
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http://userstyles.org/styles/3202 [userstyles.org]
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http://www.itprotips.com/memes/slashdot/OMGPOWNIES [itprotips.com]
Parent contains deceptive link (Score:2)
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I still don't get the humor or terror of it though... If 2girls1cup is a 10, Goatse and Tubgirl a 7, a Rickroll is a 2 on the international trolling chart.
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Speaking of rickrolls... check the featured videos on YouTube.
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tag still!omgponies (Score:1, Funny)
Aw, C'mon (Score:1)
I'll take my prank-hungry business elsewhere, thank you very much.
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This story is legit (AFAIK) (Score:3, Informative)
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I wouldn't be so... nah. Too easy.
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Just think what you could do with a beowulf cluster of those...
There goes my job (Score:1)
Anyone want to offer me a new job?
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Or if you're a haxxor, fix slashdot. I want my pink ponies!
OMG.
Hrm.... (Score:5, Funny)
Well crap.
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Mentioned on NYSE site so presumably not a hoax (Score:4, Informative)
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Someone's gonna get sued if it's a joke (Score:3, Insightful)
Posting a story like that would be a sure-fire way to make Big Blue's stock drop like a hot rock, and you'd have shareholders on your arse faster than GNAA members at an orgy.
If the SEC thought it had been done with the intent of manipulating the market for gain, though, you'd be wishing that it was just shareholders and the GNAA after your arse. Coz there'd be a strong likelihood that your arse would become property of Bubba.
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Just when I think April fools is nearly over ... (Score:1)
Ban Microsoft (Score:1, Offtopic)
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attack on Open Source? (Score:1, Interesting)
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Someone can translate it human language? (Score:1, Offtopic)
But nice tagging with !omgponies. Damn, that was so cool, a little overboard, but still cool.
Not a hoax, not a joke. (Score:5, Informative)
The timing is curious but I can assure you this is not a joke. I work as a contractor for DHS and the word came down yesterday. We said the same thing - you're kidding, right? - but it turned out to be a very real order.
I don't know how IBM is about delivering on contracts themselves, but we as a contractor (in conjunction with the government program managers) use IBM commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software extensively. Since the DHS reciprocal ban includes purchase orders, this really throws a wrench in our works. We are looking at the possibility of switching a 500+ head software development shop from IBM-Rational to...something else, by the end of the year when our maintenance runs out. Another project I work with was just evaluating and beginning development with WebSphere, and they are going to completely lose momentum.
I am sure other agencies are doing the same as far as the extent of implementation of the ban. This might be good for the taxpayers in the long run, but right now it is causing a lot of billable hours to be spent scrambling, so I sure hope it's worth it, EPA.
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Same AC from the parent on this thread.
Don't worry too much about IBM just yet. From TFA, they get about $1.7B in revenue from federal contracts each year, but this equates to 1% of IBM's annual revenue. The other 99% is still just dandy. They'll make it along just fine.
In theory, if the company is gaming contract competition, then that is detrimental to the efficient spending of government money, which is in turn bad for taxpayers. And I appreciate your sympathy for IBM's tax-paying employees, but
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Well, the answer as you obviously have guessed is that they don't. At least not on balance.
There's a philosophy in government contracting that if an ounce of medicine benefits a patient, then a quart would be thirty two times better. It's the fault of politics, with its fondness for oversimplification and grand gestures.
As a taxpayer, you're screwed. As a voter, you can at least do a little. Don't vote for the guy who is promising to run the most ethical administr
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What, do you work for IBM? Unbelievable reasoning, even for April Fool's Day.
According to your reasoning, Enron should still be kicking.
rd
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So, they failed to bribe some scumbags (Score:2)
Haliburton (Score:4, Interesting)
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Halliburton is on "our" side: The good side. It is fighting terror and assisting our troops valiants by providing them with MRE, hot showers, massages, etc., to help us defeat terrorists. It is in fact unfairly targetted by the communist-lefty press for war-profiteering.
IBM, on the other hand tried to lobby, without campaign money, for a new contract.
That IS a crime! How dare IBM lobby our esteemed congressmen and waste their precious time without reimbursing
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OOXML Bitch Slap (Score:1, Interesting)
Imagine how IBM's investors will feel about this news.
With OOXML looking like its scraping through ISO, surely this is a Redmond-inspired powerplay to remind IBM that they need to start toeing the line or be crushed.
For me there is a clear message in this announcement. Its not a coincidence.
IBM in trouble with feds during cold war, too? (Score:2)
My search-fu is failing to pull up a valid reference to this. Maybe I made it up.
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Greed (Score:1)
I'm not surprised (Score:1)
But I'm sure they can still subcontract through other vendors. It's just that they won't make as much money.
IBM has been banned several times from other agencies. My old place, they were banned for 2 years, but then sub-ed to SAIC in the mean time. Nothing new here.
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Mod troll down. That page opens a shitload of pop-ups for GNAA>
Re:April Fewls (Score:4, Informative)
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