Navy cuts CIO staff

The Navy Department's Office of the Chief Information Officer, which oversees both the Navy and Marine Corps, will be cut in half during the next few months as part of Navy Secretary Gordon England's plan to reduce overhead.

The office, reviewing its job functions during the past six weeks, found that its combined military and civilian staff of 50 could be reduced to 25 by April 2003, said Ron Turner, the Navy's deputy CIO for infrastructure, systems and technology.

Individual Navy and Marines CIOs will pick up the slack. As part of the restructuring, they will become formal deputies of the departmentwide CIO.

The Navy and Marine Corps CIOs will still follow the formal chain of command at their respective organizations for their primary duties, but for CIO-related functions, they will now report directly to the CIO office, Turner said.

Of the 25 positions that will be cut in the CIO office, three are military and those employees will be reassigned when their incumbent terms are finished.

Ray Bjorklund, vice president of market intelligence and chief knowledge officer at Federal Sources Inc., said he was confident that the Navy would find other positions for the 19 civilian employees.

Bjorklund said England's initiative is "delegating a lot of the ongoing operational responsibilities to the subordinate CIO organizations at the military service and command levels, and tying it back together with CIO governance techniques." He added that the [IT] business plan is consistent with what Office of Management and Budget is doing in requiring a business case analysis to defend funding used for support program incentives.