Navy restructuring CIO's office

As part of Navy Secretary Gordon England's plan to minimize the secretariat staff, the Navy Department's Office of the Chief Information Officer will be cut in half during the next few months.

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

As part of the restructuring, the CIO office will be signing memorandums of agreement with the Navy and Marine Corps CIOs, establishing them as formal deputies to the CIO office. The Navy and Marine Corps CIOs will still report to the formal chain of command of their respective organizations for their primary duties, but for CIO-related functions, they will now report directly to the CIO office, Turner said.

Once those memorandums of agreement are established, they will serve as a model to establish formal relationships between the CIO office and the CIOs at "echelon II" organizations such as Naval Air Systems Command and the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, he said. Turner added that "cordial relationships" now exist among these offices, but the memorandums of agreement will formalize them.

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.

The 22 civilian personnel include three employees who were on transfer from the comptroller's office. Those three will return there to focus on the information technology budget, Turner said, and the Navy will attempt to reassign the other 19 civilian employees based on their job functions.

"There are a lot of variables" — including early retirement incentives and job swaps — and plenty of time to work through them, Turner said. However, he did acknowledge that some of the 19 civilian positions could result in outright layoffs.

The CIO office restructuring will not have any effect on the Navy Marine Corps Intranet program, he said, because the personnel being shifted are mostly focused on information resources management.

Turner is taking the early retirement option and his last day is scheduled for Jan. 3, 2003, he said, adding that there's "plenty of time" before deciding on his future career plans.