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Navy likely to take new approach with network contract

Service to take more control of operations, design

Federal News Network Staff

October 20, 2008 7:27 am

4 min read

By Jason Miller
Executive Editor
FederalNewsRadio

The Navy’s Next Generation Intranet Program still is very much in the planning phase as the service prepares to release the solicitation next spring.

But Capt. Tim Holland, the N-Gen program manager, is confident based on what he’s heard so far from industry and what the Navy’s needs are that the follow-on to the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet will be a lot different.

The Navy awarded EDS a 10-year, $10 billion NMCI contract in 2000. The service used a seat management approach where EDS was responsible for end-to-end management of the network.

With N-Gen, however, the Navy believes times have changed enough that it needs a different approach.

Holland says his office is reviewing 43 white papers from industry and the trends point to a multiple award contract broken down into eight functional areas.

“When NMCI was awarded it was very focused on a business solution for the entire enterprise,” Holland says in an interview with FederalNewsRadio. “Over the last eight years, the world has changed, IT has changed. We have attacks on our networks on a regular basis. Security is a much more important. And our networks are more and more critical to day-to-day decision making within the department. We need to have a better level of network operational control. It is very critical in the future as we move forward with our network.”

Holland adds that part of that control is the network design. The Navy needs to rapidly change the network to mitigate the evolving threats.

“We will have a lot more operational and design control as we move forward in time,” he says. “As we bring more and more of the government work force on board necessary to do those functions will increase our ability to do those functions.”

Industry, though, still will play a big role in providing support of the network. But the difference is having a Navy employee who is responsible for the network’s well being.

Holland says the Navy has control of their network today, but it is too tied to the language of the contract with EDS.

“When you have a government employee or military member in charge of the network, you don’t have as much contractual negotiations that may have to occur,” he says.

This idea of more operational and design control is one lessons learned from the Navy’s experience with NMCI.

Others lessons learned include the importance of having one network for the entire enterprise.

Holland says as of now, the Navy is breaking N-Gen into eight functional areas:

Storage and data services
End user computing, which includes the desktop and all the peripherals that go with it such as the printer
Network, both wide area and local area connectivity
Applications management
Help desk support
Information assurance
Coordination across the enterprise
Program management, contract management network operations, architectural control and design, all those functions the Navy wants to keep in house

The Navy is in the final review stages of its service specifications for all eight segments.

“We have taken our basic requirements and decomposed them into what we believe to be the performance specifications required at a functional level in order to provide the capability we need to have delivered,” Holland says. “From that we believe we then can generate statements of work and request for proposals.”

Holland adds the Navy will publish those specifications in the next 2-3 weeks for industry to comment on.

The Navy will hold an industry day in December to discuss these requirements.

From last industry day, vendors suggested that the break down of these segments would be good for the Navy and industry.

“Probably the most important theme is they believe we should be breaking up the segments even more and we should break out security,” Holland says.

He adds that his office will publish the results from the industry papers so contractors can see the Navy’s interpretation of what the papers.

“We are on a timeline to ensure we have contracts in place when we believe they need to be in place,” Holland says. “So far, we have executed very closely to our original timelines for when things would be ready for either publication or internally staffing within government to make sure we have the right things.”

The Navy must get the N-Gen contract in place before October 2010 when NMCI expires.

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On the Web:

FederalNewsRadio – Navy may break Intranet contract into four pieces

FederalNewsRadio- Marines to expand use of secure ID card