Navy seats switch to NMCI

Naval Air Facility Washington

Less than a year after the contract award, the Navy's $6.9 billion effort to create an enterprise network became a reality.

Electronic Data Systems Corp., the contractor for the massive Navy Marine Corps Intranet project, officially has taken control of five desktops at the Naval Air Facility, Washington, D.C., a Navy activity at Andrews Air Force Base.

The transition of the first seats to NMCI marks an important milestone for the project, EDS officials said. "It brings the concept of NMCI into reality. We now have something to look at what NMCI is. We can kick the tires.and show that it works as proposed and as advertised," said Rick Rosenberg, EDS' NMCI program executive.

In the coming days, EDS will be working to transfer all of NAF Washington's 600 seats to the NMCI network, Rosenberg said. NAf Washington is the first of three locations that are at the forefront of rolling out NMCI.

Petty Officer 1st Class Ian Gehrmann, a 30-year-old aviation maintenance man from Madison, Wis., was the first to be logged on to the system Sept. 7.

Gehrmann sent an e-mail to Navy Secretary Gordon England and other senior officers: "At the direction of the Commanding Officer Navy Air Facility Washington, I am pleased to report to the chain of command, 'We've been given a ready deck.... NAF Washington has launched NMCI!'"

"It's an honor to be the first to receive NMCI," he wrote.

Rosenberg said that the e-mail exchange illustrates the interoperability of systems.

NAF Washington trains Naval Air Reserve units for their mobilization assignments and provides administration coordination and logistics support for these units. It also provides air operations support for the Naval District Washington, including for foreign dignitaries.

EDS has taken responsibility for network operations and maintenance at 29 sites and more than 42,000 seats. This stage, called assumption of responsibility, is a first step and typically requires that EDS take responsibility for individual contracts at each site.

Cutover, where all of a site's users move to the EDS NMCI network, is the second step. NAF Washington is the first site to take that step.

The cutover comes as the Navy and the Pentagon reached an agreement on how NMCI's performance will be tested. Rosenberg said that agreement lets the program move forward.

Meanwhile, Rosenberg said that EDS has stepped up security on NMCI in light of the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in New York. There have been no indications of any cyberattacks so far, however, he said.