Navy appoints single leader to manage multibillion intranet project

The Navy has appointed an admiral to manage the Navy Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI), one of the largest information technology projects in the federal government. NMCI is the name of the Navy's 5-year, $4.1 billion-effort to outsource the technology, maintenance and help desk support for more than 350,000 desktops and 200 networks. The Navy awarded the NCMI contract to Electronic Data Systems Corp. in October 2000. Rear Adm. Charles L. Munns, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., currently commands Submarine Group Eight and is expected to begin managing the complex NMCI rollout in mid-February. Munns was involved in the early stages of developing NMCI and will be able to come in and hit the ground running, said Capt. Chris Christopher, the Navy's deputy program executive officer for information technology and director of NMCI services. Until now, the Navy's NMCI decision-making process has been scattered among decision-makers in several offices, including the Program Executive Office-IT, the CIO's office and two other program offices, one in Virginia and another in California, said Christopher. The new NMCI Program Office is intended to streamline authority over the project. "NMCI is very much a groundbreaking effort," Christopher said. "We had to marshal resources from all over the department to create the request for proposals and the contract. There was also a huge team required to get the contract awarded. That structure continued after the contract was awarded. It has proved on execution not to be the best management structure. We needed one person in charge of it." EDS has finished converting Naval Air Facility Washington to NMCI and is in the process of testing the project at Naval Air Station Lemoore in California. Next on the list for conversion is Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland.