Navy secretary bolsters NMCI

Navy Secretary Gordon England used a servicewide memo to voice his full support of the Navy Marine Corps Intranet, the first such memo he has issued on the subject since taking his post.

England said the memo reinforces and updates the NMCI policies stated by his predecessor as Navy secretary, Richard Danzig.

"I want to reiterate to each person how important our Navy Marine Corps Intranet initiative is to the future of our Navy and Marine Corps," England said. "It's the right thing to do and we are proceeding to make it a reality."

NMCI, a $6.9 billion effort to outsource the Navy's information technology infrastructure, will consolidate systems and applications, and improve security, reliability and service, England said.

"Substantial as these benefits are, they are dwarfed by the implications of empowering instantaneous information access" throughout the Navy, he said. "A highly structured, stovepiped, hierarchical organization has put itself on the path to being highly flexible, intimately integrated."

The challenge ahead is whether the Navy can take advantage of the capabilities that NMCI will offer, he said. "This will require changes that transcend technology—they are changes in the way we do things," England said.