SAIC
Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) NYSE: SAI is a FORTUNE 500 scientific, engineering and technology applications company in the United States with numerous federal, state, and private sector clients. It works extensively with the United States Department of Defense, the United States Department of Homeland Security, and the United States Intelligence Community, including the National Security Agency, as well as other U.S. Government civil agencies and selected commercial markets. It was founded by Dr. J. Robert "Bob" Beyster in 1969 in La Jolla, California, as Science Applications Incorporated. As of 2008, SAIC employed 43,800 employees in 150 cities worldwide and reported $8.9 billion in revenue for its fiscal year ended January 31, 2008, making it number 285 on the Fortune 500 list.In fiscal year 2003, SAIC did over $2.6 billion in business with the United States Department of Defense, making it the ninth largest defense contractor in the United States. Other large contracts include their contract for information technology for the 2004 Olympics in Greece and from 2001 to 2005, SAIC was the primary contractor for the FBI's failed Virtual Case File project.
On November 3, 2003, Kenneth C. Dahlberg was named the CEO of SAIC, ending Beyster's 30+ years of leadership. In May 2005, under the new CEO, the company changed its external tagline from An Employee-Owned Company to From Science to Solutions, retaining the former for internal communications.
The company has had as part of its management, and on its Board of Directors, many well known ex-government personnel including Melvin Laird, Secretary of Defense in the Nixon administration; William Perry, Secretary of Defense for Bill Clinton; John Deutsch, President Clinton's CIA Director; Admiral Bobby Ray Inman who served in various capacities in the NSA and CIA for the Ford, Carter and Reagan administrations; and David Kay who led the search for weapons of mass destruction for the U.N. following the 1991 Gulf War and for the Bush Administration following the 2003 Iraq invasion.
In June 2001 the FBI paid SAIC $122 million to create a virtual case file system or VCF – software to speed up the sharing of information among agents. But the FBI abandoned VCF when it failed to function adequately. Robert Mueller, FBI Director, testified to a congressional committee, “When SAIC delivered the first product in December 2003 we immediately identified a number of deficiencies – 17 at the outset. That soon cascaded to 50 or more and ultimately to 400 problems with that software ... We were indeed disappointed.”
"We fully conformed to the contract we have and gave the taxpayers real value for their money," said Arnold L. Punaro, executive vice president of SAIC.
He blamed the FBI for the initial problems, saying the agency had a parade of program managers and demanded too many design changes. During 15 months that SAIC worked on the program, 19 different government managers were involved and 36 contract modifications were ordered, he said.
"There were an average of 1.3 changes every day from the FBI, for a total of 399 changes during the period," Punaro said.