The $164 million question

Navy Marine Corps Intranet user — come on down! You will get to answer questions that could be worth $164 million.

In an unusual move for government, a user survey will determine whether EDS gets a $164 million customer satisfaction incentive — money that would be above and beyond the $6.9 billion base value for the eight-year contract.

Navy officials see the customer satisfaction incentive as an innovative provision of the NMCI contract because it will encourage the NMCI Information Strike Force, the EDS-led group of vendors rolling out NMCI, to focus on a key metric: How satisfied are the people using the NMCI infrastructure?

NMCI is the Navy's effort to create an enterprisewide network across its shore-based sites, encompassing more than 400,000 seats. Navy officials said that they included the significant customer satisfaction incentive as a way to motivate the NMCI Information Strike Force.

Customer satisfaction plays an important role in many desktop outsourcing efforts, such as the General Services Administration's Seat Management and the Outsourcing the Desktop Initiative for NASA (ODIN) contracts.

Karen Smith, acting ODIN program manager, said that the ODIN contracts let the NASA centers establish what customer-satisfaction level the vendors must meet. The centers have set the goal at anything from 90 percent to 98 percent, she said. The actual satisfaction levels are then determined by a survey of users, primarily those who either have problems or use the help desk. NASA withholds a percentage of the overall contract payment and then reimburses the vendor once the performance level is met, she said.

Meanwhile, GSA's Seat Management contracts enable the agency to determine the role customers will play, said Mickey Femino, director of the GSA Federal Technology Service's Center for Innovative Business Solutions.

The Navy decided to make the customer-satisfaction incentive large enough to encourage improved performance, said Edward Schmitz, the lead for information technology performance measurement for the Navy's Office of the Chief Information Officer, in a briefing with reporters March 5. Therefore, EDS can clearly see a return on investments. For example, the company may decide to add people to its help desks as part of an effort to reap more of the incentive.

Customer satisfaction will be tallied quarterly using an online survey that will go to about one-quarter of NMCI's users. Within a year, every NMCI user will be surveyed, Schmitz said.

Navy and EDS officials are still working on the survey questions and negotiating how those questions will be weighted to determine an overall grade, he said.

The incentive tied to the customer satisfaction survey is up to $100 per seat per quarter for what will be 411,000 seats across the Navy's shore-based operations.

EDS would get the full $100 per seat if it scores better than 95 percent in customer satisfaction; $50 per seat if it scores better than 90 percent; and $25 per seat if it scores better than 85 percent.