NMCI survey may bring bonus

If you are a 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 for the eight-year contract.

Navy officials see the customer satisfaction incentive as an innovative provision of the NMCI contract because it will cause 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?

Customer satisfaction will be tallied quarterly using an online survey that will go to about one-quarter of NMCI users. Within a year, every NMCI user will be surveyed, said Edward Schmitz, the lead for information technology performance measurement for the Navy's Office of the Chief Information Officer.

Navy and EDS officials are still working on the survey questions and negotiating how those questions will be weighted to determine an overall grade, Schmitz said. Therefore, Navy and EDS officials would not release the survey questions. The results of the survey eventually will be made public, officials said.

A significant incentive is tied to the customer satisfaction survey -- 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 95 percent or better in customer satisfaction; $50 per seat if it scores greater than 90 percent; and $25 per seat if it scores better than 85 percent.

Schmitz, in a briefing with reporters March 5, said the Navy decided to make the customer satisfaction incentive large enough so that it would encourage improved performance. Therefore, EDS can see a clear return on investments.

The first surveys will go out in June, primarily at NMCI's first rollout site, the Naval Air Facility, located at Andrews Air Force Base in the Washington, D.C., area. However the survey also could incorporate users at the Naval Air Reserve Center, Lemoore, Calif., and the Naval Air Systems Command at the Naval Air Station in Patuxent River, Md.