Navy e-business pilots sail forth

Navy e-business operations office Web site

The Navy's e-business office announced that the first round of its fiscal 2004 pilot projects will cover six programs with a total funding of $3.8 million.

Pilot projects include streamlining the fleet software approval and deployment cycle and improving communications tools that enhance data accessibility.

The Navy's e-business office has been the service's leader for years on funding pilot programs to determine if the projects can be incorporated into the way the Navy does business. The pilot program has funded about 50 projects during the past three years.

The Navy e-business operations office continuously evaluates submissions from Navy and Marine Corps commands. From its headquarters at the Naval Support Activity in Mechanicsburg, Pa., the e-business operations office is also the executive agent for Defense Department e-business pilot projects and provides consulting support to commands implementing e-business applications and solutions.

The first round of 2004 pilots consists of:

* Navy Net-centric Aircraft Maintenance Pilot Project: This Naval Air Systems Command pilot brings legacy maintenance databases, electronic maintenance manuals and other resource information to technicians and supervisors at the point of maintenance through a wireless network. The pilot aims to resolve interoperability issues among different classes of Interactive Electronic Technical Manuals, which will decrease erroneous expenses and reduce training time.

* Speed to Capability Approval, Management and Planning Process: Sponsored by the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command and the Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence and Space Program Executive Office, this pilot develops an automated, enterprisewide decision support process to reduce the current approval process by 50 percent. The Navy says the process could save $20 million over five years.

* Navy Public Affairs Knowledge Management System (Navy PA KM): Navy PA KM will use a suite of knowledge management and collaboration tools on the Web to provide public affairs officers around the globe the capability to publish timely news updates to Navy leadership, Navy personnel and the public sector.

* Collaborative Energy Conservation and Fuel Status Board: Naval Sea Systems Command and the Commander of the Third Fleet jointly sponsored this pilot to automate the creation of ships' fuel consumption curves and a consolidated battle group fuel status display. This pilot will generate fuel status information and provide audible and visual warnings when the propulsion plant is operating outside predetermined fuel-efficient tolerance levels.

* Legacy System Modernization: The project's objective is to demonstrate the capability of automated software modernization tools as a cost-effective method available to functional area managers to make legacy applications compliant with the Navy Marine Corps Intranet. The pilot will provide an automated approach for modernizing legacy system software. This will be accomplished by utilizing commercial translation software to convert legacy application code into modern, object-oriented, NMCI-compliant code.

* Software Configuration Management: This pilot targets the improvement of installed afloat software configuration management. It will provide an authoritative, centralized repository for afloat tactical and nontactical software configuration data to the fleet and ashore establishments resulting in improved battle group interoperability and communications.