The Navy's $10 billion Navy Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI) will be awarded September 1 with operations beginning October 1, according to Ron Turner, deputy chief information officer of the Navy for infrastructure, systems and technology.
But this timeline will only hold if Congress is satisfied with an omnibus report delivered by the Navy to House and Senate members on June 30. The report, several inches thick, seeks to clarify points of congressional concern on issues such as funding, small business participation in the contract, NMCI's effect on Naval civilian and military IT personnel, and the Navy's contracting strategy.
"We delivered to Congress a book that outlines all the money we plan to spend in the near term as well as the number of people that will be affected by NMCI," Turner said. "We hope to begin work on 1 October-that's our schedule and we'd like to keep to it. However, if Congress or the Office of Management and Budget or even the Defense Department is not happy with what we've submitted, then obviously we're not going to go forward with an award."
The report includes the Navy's budget summary for the project from 2001 to 2005. NMCI will cost $256 million in FY 2001, $1 billion in FY 2002 and just under $1.5 billion each year until FY 2005.
To alleviate congressional concerns, the Navy has designated 35 percent of the contract to be subcontracted to small businesses.
Because this is an IT outsourcing contract, staffing issues are at the core of congressional concerns about NMCI. But, according to the report, NMCI will affect less than one percent of all Navy personnel. "What we've tried to say is that NMCI is not a people or jobs issue," Turner said. "We envision that people who have an IT function and are displaced by the contract will be used elsewhere in IT within the department."
The report details how a set of 44 performance measures, or service level agreements (SLAs), are built into the contract. "This is a very different concept from anything we've ever done before," Turner said. SLAs work by setting out a performance metric that the contractor is required to meet or beat.
"The contract is full of incentives should the contractor do well and full of penalties where they will not get paid should they not do well," Turner said.
The issuance of the report coincided with the submission proposals from the four vendor teams-Computer Sciences Corp., Electronic Data Systems Corp., General Dynamics Corp., and IBM Corp.-vying for the NMCI award.
But no matter what team wins, it will immediately have a large task to complete. The Navy is attempting to converge over 100 disparate networks into a single intranet under NMCI. Plus, NMCI will outsource the hardware, software, service and support needs of nearly 350,000 desktops, or seats, enterprisewide. The Navy believes each seat will cost $4,582 per year with all costs combined.
The report also focused on the most compelling reasons for NMCI as identified by Navy leadership. "Experience in private corporations shows that transforming information management will transform all management," wrote Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig to the chairmen of the four House and Senate defense-related committees. "This will generate rewards through the whole range of our business and mission activities."
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