NMCI service under scrutiny

The Navy officially turned up the heat on EDS earlier this month when it began monitoring the service users are receiving through the Navy Marine Corps Intranet.

Under the terms of the contract, EDS is paid based on its ability to meet specific service levels on key measures, such as network uptime, availability of applications and help-desk response time. The contract includes rewards if the company exceeds the levels and penalties if it does not achieve them.

Those service-level agreements kicked in Aug. 9 when NMCI passed the 20,000-user mark, said Bill Richard, EDS' NMCI enterprise client executive, speaking at an Aug. 14 briefing with reporters. Under a September 2001 agreement with senior Pentagon officials, EDS and the Navy must review the service levels for a month and conduct an "operational assessment" that shows that the data monitored by the enterprise management system is accurate.

Navy officials must then provide a report to John Stenbit, DOD's chief information officer, and Michael Wynne, deputy undersecretary of Defense for acquisition and technology.

If DOD officials give their approval, the Navy will be allowed to order an additional 150,000 seats, raising the current order to as many as 310,000 — significantly more than half of the 400,000 seats covered under the NMCI contract.