Navy turns to newcomers for new technology ideas

The Navy must embrace a type of "young-think" with regards to information technology, to modernize its administrative capabilities and maintain its cutting-edge advantage on the battlefield, according to top-ranking information officers who spoke at a Navy League conference Wednesday.

"There are people out there who still feel like they have to have a piece of paper between their fingers," Rear Adm. Kenneth Slaght, commander of the Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, told a large crowd of Defense officials and industry representatives. "We've got to make that go away."

Although the private sector is "bringing lots of solutions to the table," Slaght said figuring out how to dovetail some of those technologies and integrate them with the military's existing "legacy" systems has been a challenge for Navy officials.

But as high-ranking officials wrestle with those high-tech puzzles on dry land, Slaght said plenty of innovative technological thinking is occurring hundreds of miles out at sea. "The incredibly smart young sailors and officers out there are coming up with ideas faster than we could ever lock ourselves in a room and think of them," Slaght said. "Once we give them the tools, they make the paperwork go away themselves."

Encouraging that type of ingenuity has become a top Navy priority, according to Vice Adm. Richard Mayo, director of Space, Information Warfare, and Command and Control. Last October, for example, the Navy created a new classification for officers with a background in information technology, as part of its ongoing transformation efforts.

The newly designated "information professional community," which includes about 330 officers, oversees the Navy's network centric operations at sea and is helping to develop the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet.

"We want to re-tour these folks, ashore and afloat, in continuous kinds of jobs that relate to information technology, information operations, or space," Mayo said. "We want to continually refresh and update these people."

The Navy also is enhancing professional development opportunities for information systems technicians, as part of its Task Force for Excellence Through Commitment to Education and Learning (Task Force EXCEL) program. The task force, launched last year, aims to train sailors in a variety of fields, in a manner that is comparable to private sector training opportunities.

"This is about new delivery methods for training and education for our officers and enlisted folks, as well as [civilian employees]," Mayo said. "We are really looking at this seriously to see if we're doing it the right way. We suspect we're not."

The Navy is working with information technology experts from a variety of industries to determine the best ways to enhance its IT workforce through Task Force EXCEL. For example, Mayo said, Navy officials are considering whether to send system technicians to "a commercial school, to get a Microsoft designation or a Cisco credential or something else, so the Navy doesn't do all of [the training], but only part of it."