Computer Sciences gets EPA contract
The company plans to work with the Environmental Protection Agency to develop a database that will serve as a central repository, a contract worth up to $285 million.
The Central Data Exchange (CDX) will serve as a single point of entry for federal, state and local environmental agencies, as well as businesses, to report environmental data, officials said.
The seven-year contract is worth up to $285 million.
"Right now (data) comes into different program offices (at the EPA) by different means. You may have to log on to one system to get that data in, log on to another system to send that data there. Some you may have to send in by mail," said Helene Epstein, program manager for the EPA CDX program at Computer Sciences. "We're trying to set up one central portal."
The EPA has already been running a pilot version of CDX, which can currently accept data for certain air, water, waste and toxics programs. The goal is to support all EPA environmental reporting by 2004. Epstein said CSC will first look at that pilot and see what can be used going forward.
The CDX will use Extensible Markup Language (XML), a set of data definitions that allows organizations to trade data across multiple computing systems that might not be compatible. The EPA has been developing a version of XML with definitions specific to environmental topics.
Last month, Computer Sciences signed a seven-year, $31 million contract to install a new computer system for the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Last year, Computer Sciences announced an $86 million contract to support the Department of Defense Computer Investigations Training Program and a $229 million contract extension from the Department of Education.