Company Overview
Information Sciences Corporation (ISC) is a young and growing information technology (IT) services provider. Founded in 1998 and headquartered in Silver Spring just off the Washington, D.C., beltway, ISC now has a staff of over thirty highly expert and innovative computer engineers, database managers and other IT professionals. ISC's core competency is using web-enabled technology to integrate, operate and maintain large, geographically dispersed systems and databases. ISC specializes in delivering web-based solutions that are highly reliable and scalable and are engineered to evolve continuously into the future. ISC solutions power many of the Federal government's electronic procurement and other electronic government projects.

Mission
ISC was founded with a vision to create an IT company that consistently delivers very reliable electronic government and commerce solutions that yield high returns for customer investments. ISC understands that its customers' bottom line is to realize maximum return on their IT investments, both legacy and current -- achieving that goal is ISC's mission. ISC's means for doing that has been to recruit and retain the most highly qualified computer professionals - many of ISC's employees have PhDs in computer sciences and other advanced degrees. ISC's staff is well acquainted with the path of computer technology development over the last twenty years -- the successes and failures and the future possibilities. ISC's engineers apply their in-depth knowledge of computer design fundamentals and trends to develop systems that deliver high value functionality early at low cost and with minimal risk, preserve return remaining from legacy investments, and are long-lived. Their longevity is attributable to being designed to evolve to take advantage of technological advances and to accommodate changes in the customer's needs. ISC's focus has been fully web-based solutions, but ISC's expertise spans the computer engineering landscape from legacy mainframe applications to the latest open source offerings.

Philosophy
ISC has followed a technologically agnostic path - rather than try to force-fit a customer's needs into preferred or generic products, ISC's engineers consider open source as well as proprietary technologies and select the approach that is most appropriate for addressing the customer's specific needs. ISC's staff tailors the technology to craft an application that delivers maximum value for the customer's money. ISC's engineers stay abreast of technology's cutting edge, but they also keep a close eye on cost and risk, recommending the latest technology only when its potential is proven and the costs and risks can be understood and prudently managed.

ISC's success in implementing this approach is due to the superior capabilities of its employees - many have PhDs and other advanced degrees and in-depth knowledge of computer technology's development path. By relying on the expertise and insight of ISC's computer engineers, customers are able to avoid wasting money on technologies that pose high risks or have uncertain futures. ISC's goal is to select and if necessary develop further technologies that maximize the return that its customers realize from their investments in legacy as well as new systems now and into the future.

ISC's experience with large-scale, government-wide systems has reinforced the ISC staff's appreciation for the fundamental principles of good IT engineering and system management practices. To perform successful system development, operations, and maintenance, ISC's staff establishes strict configuration management procedures and enforces these procedures on all projects ISC performs. However, the most important lesson that ISC has learned is that despite the best engineering practice all software and hardware will fail at some point. It is the system monitoring procedures that make the difference. Understanding this, ISC incorporates monitoring procedures for all processes and subsystems in all its projects and performs preventive maintenance to address problems before they become visible to users and can impact users' work. ISC further recognizes that effective help desk support is key to user satisfaction and attributes its successes in part to the support that the ISC help desk staff provides to ISC's clients.

Consistent with ISC's disciplined approach to managing costs and risks, when deploying large-scale systems, ISC prefers an evolutionary approach that allows investment to be made in stages as design concepts and technology choices demonstrate their worth, thereby lowering risk for customers and increasing the likelihood their investments will be worthwhile and yield high returns. ISC's evolutionary approach is right in line with the staged deployment approach endorsed by U.S. Office of Management and Budget for prudently managing costs and risks when government agencies undertake large IT projects.

As discussed below, ISC's work has been instrumental to the success of many large-scale, e-gov initiatives. ISC's solutions integrate different databases, business practices and technologies used by agencies across the Federal government. ISC's solutions, which are totally web-based, must interoperate across the full range of agency and personal computer platforms to provide seamless access to a wide variety of users outside as well as inside the government.

History
ISC's first project was to provide technical leadership for the development of a IT system for making electronically available at a single point of entry on the web for information about business opportunities at Federal agencies (named "FedBizOpps" and accessed at (www.fedbizopps.gov)) - synopsis of solicitations for competitive acquisitions, the solicitations themselves, and related documents and information. The FedBizOpps system, which ISC operates and maintains in partnership with Science Applications International Corporation under contract with the General Services Administration (GSA), is now an essential and highly reliable part of the Federal acquisition process. As described in more detail under Projects, today the FedBizOpps site is accessed a million times a day and its success has been recognized by frequent awards.

The FedBizOpps success led to ISC's selection for work on other Federal electronic government initiatives to reengineer the government's contract and grant processes. Today, ISC's solutions also provide easy web access to notices, solicitations and other information about grant and other financial assistance opportunities (www.grants.gov/Find), to lists of debarred or other parties ineligible to receive government contracts or participate in government programs (www.epls.gov), and to information about contracts that are available for interagency ordering (www.contractdirectory.gov). These systems are discussed in more detail under Projects.) As in the case of FedBizOpps, the high value functionality and reliability delivered to the users of these totally web-based systems is making them essential and assumed parts of the government's acquisition and grants business operations. ISC's technical leadership on these projects has been key to their success - it has been powering these e-government contract and grant initiatives.

Today, ISC sees a future building on its employees' skill in delivering highly successful large-scale, totally web-based systems. For the systems already deployed, ISC sees great potential for exploiting their designed-in capability to evolve and take advantage of opportunities to incorporate new technologies and further transforming government acquisition, grants, and other government processes. ISC's goal is to expand its role as a key partner in the effort to implement electronic government and to help the government realize the potential for achieving the breakthrough mission performance that benefits citizens.