Munns spells out NMCI priorities

Navy officials expect the Navy Marine Corps Intranet to pass its first milestone as early as next month, the new director of the NMCI Program Office said.

That comes as the Navy has retooled the management of its massive effort to create an enterprisewide network for its shore-based sites.

Rear Adm. Charles Munns, in his first meeting with reporters since being named to the post in February, compared the scope of the efforts to roll out more than 400,000 NMCI seats with the Navy's efforts to fix the Year 2000 computer problem.

During the April 2 briefing, Munns said that his top priority for NMCI is the testing process, which will provide data for Pentagon officials to determine whether NMCI can move forward.

The original law authorizing NMCI stipulated that the Navy would roll out a certain number of seats to prove the feasibility of the concept. Under a September 2001 agreement, John Stenbit, Defense Department chief information officer, and Michael Wynne, deputy undersecretary for Defense for acquisition and technology, must give their approval to allow the Navy to order another 100,000 seats.

The contractor tests and evaluations (CT&Es) are a critical piece of information for that decision, officials have said.

Munns confirmed that CT&E has been going well at the initial three sites.

Munns said his second priority is getting more of a handle on the Navy's legacy applications. The Navy has identified nearly 100,000 applications and is working to refine the process to determine whether those applications will be moved to the new NMCI network.

Finally, Munns said he will be working on a plan for what happens after Stenbit and Wynne make their determination. "We need a specific plan by dates so commands out there know when they are going to join the NMCI network," he said.

Munns said that the Navy has reassessed its decision to place the global network operations center at the Marine base at Quantico, Va.

The Navy Department and contractor EDS were looking to house the fourth NMCI network operations center at Quantico, but Munns said that decision is up in the air because no building at Quantico could be used for such a purpose.

The network operations centers provide mission-critical services for the Navy's new EDS-owned network, such as network management and monitoring, help-desk support, user administration and information assurance.

The original plan was for NMCI to have six network operations centers. Last year, however, EDS decided NMCI would need only four centers and two "enterprise management facilities," which Navy officials said are essentially mini-network operations centers.

EDS has opened centers at the Naval Station Norfolk, Va., and at the Naval Air Station North Island on Coronado Island in San Diego County, Calif. The third center is under construction at Ford Island in Oahu, Hawaii.

Munns said the Navy Department is looking for a site for the fourth center, and it is likely that one of the four centers will serve at the global one.