NMCI service levels being refined

Summary of proposed changes for SLAs

The Navy and EDS are working to "tighten" the service level agreements that are the basis of measuring the performance of the Navy Marine Corps Intranet, a senior Navy official said.

NMCI is a performance-based contract under which EDS must meet specific service levels. The company gets docked if it does not meet those levels and gets paid a bonus if it exceeds those levels.

When the contract was written, it laid out more than 135 specific performance requirements in 20 different categories.

During an Aug. 27 press briefing, Capt. Chris Christopher, NMCI's deputy director of plans, policy and oversight, said that it has always been anticipated that the Navy and EDS would re-examine the service level agreements.

The idea is to ensure that the service levels are measuring things that actually matter, he said.

"We're simply tightening up the language," he said. "We're making sure they make sense."

NMCI is the Navy's effort to build an enterprisewide network across some 400,000 seats at its shore-based facilities.

Under the contract, the Navy and EDS had to roll out 20,000 seats before they would officially start monitoring the service levels. Monitoring will start very soon, Christopher said.

The service levels are monitored using an enterprise management system located at the NMCI network operations centers in Norfolk, Va., San Diego and Hawaii. That system is expected to go online soon, Christopher said.

The operation of that enterprise management system is one of the questions at the heart of NMCI's next milestone. Pentagon officials have asked the Navy to demonstrate that it can accurately monitor the service levels.

NMCI officials said they hope to have those tests completed by October and pass the next milestone in November.