Hobnobbing at Homeland Security

Who does the manager of the biggest government merger in half a century call when he needs advice? The manager of one the biggest corporate mergers in U.S. history, of course.

Carly Fiorina, the chief of hardware giant Hewlett-Packard, has been keeping company of late with Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, according to several HP executives. Among the topics of discussion is what the government can learn from HP's melding of 150,000 employees and dozens of business units after its $19 billion merger with computer maker Compaq last year.

Fiorina has first-hand experience with one of the biggest issues Ridge is grappling with now: how to bring tens of thousands of people under one roof without bringing down the house. She is sharing her experiences with the newest Cabinet secretary on a regular basis, and has become HP's "greatest ambassador" to Homeland Security, says William Mutell, the company's vice president of corporate strategy.

But the talk isn't all corporate diplomacy. Fiorina and her crew are familiar with the technological hurdles of mega-mergers. Administration officials have toiled for more than a year now figuring out how to tie together nearly two dozen security agencies' vast technological arsenals. HP is making a play to be the department's integrator of choice when the time comes to lash the systems into place.

That's a new role for a company known for selling computers and printers. But HP is refashioning itself as a high-level consultant, and executives have been making the rounds with officials at many federal agencies, picking their brains in the manner of the Ridge-Fiorina tête-à-têtes.

Traditional integrators such as Lockheed Martin and big tech consultants such as Accenture might find HP's move quixotic, given its lack of experience in these areas. But no matter, Mutell says. The company has already sized up the major players in the industry and is determining how to add them to HP's "constellations" of strategic partnerships.

Mutell is no stranger to the machinations of the federal government. He served as an Army intelligence officer and worked at agencies for nearly a quarter century. And his boss is one of the most government-seasoned of America's major CEOs. Fiorina cut her executive teeth working in the federal division of AT&T.

Intelligence Gaps

Note to industry: Think you've got the solution to help U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism agencies connect the dots to predict terrorist attacks? Think again.

Officials with the Energy Department's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory say there are major gaps between the technologies intelligence agencies need and what the private sector can deliver. One of the biggest problems is corporate products can't handle the terabytes of data that would be generated by culling through hundreds of federal databases to analyze terrorist clues, says Ned Wogman, director of the lab's homeland security research. A terabyte equals about 1,000 billion bytes of data.

Wogman and his fellow engineers ought to know what industry is up against. The lab is a pioneer in the field of visual analytics, and has developed various programs that show graphically how information is connected. Among the lab's senior staff is Jim Thomas, regarded as the godfather of the field. Wogman says the Defense Department tried to recruit Thomas for its controversial Terrorism Information Awareness data analysis project, which seeks to predict attacks.

Asked whether the lab's researchers had seen any products lately that knocked their socks off, a spokeswoman for the lab responded rhetorically, "Other than ours?"

How to Deal

The Energy Department is flexing its purchasing muscle in a deal with one of the country's biggest software makers.

The department worked with the Center for Internet Security, a business and government consortium chaired by former Office of Management and Budget official Franklin Reeder, to create a set of security specifications for Oracle Corp. products. Then, Energy required Oracle to meet those standards as part of a new contract.

Energy will deliver Oracle software electronically to its sites from a central location, so that all users get the latest-and presumably most secure-version at the same time. OMB has been hounding agencies to use their massive buying power to force companies to make safer products. Oracle counts the federal government as its single largest customer.

Loopy for Linux?

The floodgates are open at the Defense Department for purveyors of open source software to give companies such as Microsoft Corp. a run for their money.

In May, Defense Chief Information Officer John Stenbit issued a memo that endorsed departmentwide purchase of the software, which allows users to change and then redistribute its source code, the software's "DNA." Open source advocates believe sharing those codes improves the design, leading to better operating systems.

While the Defense policy stopped short of endorsing open source software, it paves the way for Defense agencies to buy, use and develop it.

To software makers such as Microsoft that keep their codes secret, open source technology is a threat. In June, CEO Steve Ballmer told employees that, to his chagrin, the support of open source technology-specifically the Linux operating system-by companies such as IBM Corp. has "added credibility" to open source devotees' claims of superiority.

Also in June, IBM added to its government client roster agencies in Belgium, Finland, France, Germany and Spain, confirming the "overwhelming [government] momentum behind the open source operating system," says an IBM spokeswoman.

One of Linux's main selling points has been cost: Many users presume it's free, because its source code is openly distributed. But private sector executives have reported being handed big bills for enterprise versions of Linux that sit on their mainframes, calling into question whether Defense users would be so quick to throw their Windows out the window.