NMCI may be homeland model

Department of Homeland Security

The Navy's massive effort to outsource its shore-based network infrastructure is a concept that many agencies will use as a model, a former Navy captain said, and the proposed Homeland Security Department could be an early organization to step up to the plate.

The new department will face the yeoman task of bringing together agencies as well as creating a way to collect information from other agencies across the government, said John Higbee, a professor of program management at the Defense Acquisition University. Therefore, that organization will require communication links to extended partners.

"I think it will be the single biggest information technology initiatives that have come out of the federal government ever," Higbee said June 18 at the Fortune One Business conference in Falls Church, Va. Federal Computer Week is a co-sponsor of the conference.

"We need to come up with a way [to] sift through the haystack and find the needles," Higbee said.

Many agencies will increasingly turn toward enterprise infrastructures that improve security and interoperability, he said. Higbee, during his tenure as deputy to the deputy assistant secretary of the Navy, was a key player who spearheaded the Navy Marine Corps Intranet, the Navy's $6.9 billion initiative to create a single network for the service's more than 400,000 shore-based seats.

Higbee acknowledged that NMCI will not be the exact model that everybody uses, but the overall concept — creating an enterprise infrastructure — is a strong trend.

"Enterprise provision of services adjusted to the needs of the organization is going to be more in vogue," he said. Those initiatives will not replicate NMCI, he said, but they will incorporate the ideas that drove the Navy toward that project.