U.S. Forest Service to cut IT jobs

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August 23, 2004 (Computerworld) -- The U.S. Forest Service is cutting the equivalent of 500 full-time IT jobs as part of the agency's reorganization of its IT department.
A Forest Service spokesman today confirmed that Forest Service employees won a competitive sourcing contract to manage the agency's IT department. The workers had bid against private companies for the contract, although the forest agency didn't disclose the names of other bidders.
The contract is for five years and is valued at $295 million, according to Forest Service spokesman Dave Heerwagen. He said the Forest Service expects to save approximately $100 million over the five years the agreement is in place.
"We had 2,500 positions working on this, part time to full time. There were 830 full-time positions," he said. "As a result of the contract, there will be 650 full-time positions [remaining] and no part-time positions. That's an overall savings of full-time equivalents in the area of 500, give or take."
Heerwagen said some of the affected employees will be offered buyouts or early retirement.
The employees' proposal called for consolidating the agency's 150 data centers to 10 server farms, he said.
"That was a big savings on personnel costs, on maintenance costs and on equipment costs," Heerwagen said. "We also are bringing in some automated tools that are widely available for keeping our inventory, that are helping us to do more work remotely in terms of imaging machinery, rather than having a person come in and touch the machine."

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