SAIC pays DOD settlement

[Robbien]

Defense contractor Science Applications International Corp. has agreed to pay $484,500 to settle allegations it violated the False Claims Act when designing a computer system program for the U.S. Department of Defense

California-based SAIC, which has offices throughout Maryland, received a contract from the Department of Defense to design and develop the Defense Occupational and Environmental Health Readiness System. SAIC was to create a unified system that would include each Department of Defense employee's occupational health data.

The contract's initial phase required SAIC to make weekly and monthly status reports on its progress with the industrial hygiene component of the project. SAIC also had to participate in a system that tracks defense contractors' progress on projects and pays a predetermined amount for each component they finish.

The federal government alleged that SAIC repeatedly misrepresented its progress on the project. An independent audit by the Department of Defense after SAIC completed its work showed that when SAIC was claiming the project was 96 percent complete, it was only half finished, the government said.

http://washington.bizjournals.com/washington/stories/2004/03/22/daily23.html

[Veggie Meathead]

1. As David Kay (President of SAIC) distances himself from

the Bush administration, expect to see more and more such announcements in the future.