Virginia to pay Northrop Grumman $35.8 million to end IT contract

The Virginia Information Technologies Agency (VITA) and Northrop Grumman settled a dispute last Friday, ending a lengthy attempt by the state to leave its long-term contract to reform its IT procurement policies. Virginia, like other states, has taken a multi-vendor approach, allowing for more flexibility in contracting. Virginia’s contract with Northrop was the last of its kind in the nation, as states have moved away from the monolithic IT outsourcing agreements to models that use multiple vendors.

Although the settlement was just reached, Virginia has in fact already implemented a multi-vendor IT model through which the state will acquire technology products and services from a range of contractors, rather than just relying on Northrop for all matters. Over the past few months, the state has awarded contracts for a variety of services, all to different vendors. This includes contracts with Atos for managed security services, Iron Bow for end-user services, Unisys for servers, storage, and data center services, Verizon for voice and data networking, and Xerox for print services.

Source: StateScoop