The Navy is confident it can transition to the next generation of the Navy Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI) by the end of September, about three months earlier than the expected timeframe based on when the service awarded the contract to Hewlett-Packard [HP], a program official said April 4
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The Navy’s program manager for the Next Generation Enterprise Network (NGEN), Capt. Michael Abreu, said even though there was a delay because the companies that lost the contract lodged a protest, program officials have been able to expedite the process.
“We accelerated that by three months,” Abreu told reporters. He said time was saved because HP was the incumbent on NMCI when it prevailed on the NGEN award and was knowledgeable of the system, and because of thorough planning for the transition.
The transition was originally supposed to take place this month, but the competition was delayed as the Navy continuously reviewed and revised the requirements. An award was not made until June, months later than planned. The contract, worth $3.5 billion if all options are exercised over five years, calls for transitioning within 13 months of the award.
A key aspect of NGEN is the restructuring of the contract arrangement for NMCI. Rather than HP owning and operating the intranet, it will now be owned by the Navy with HP as the operator. The Marine Corps will now own and operate the system with HP’s support.
“Now we have ownership of that intellectual property, and we have control of that intellectual property and the network infrastructure itself, so we now can make better informed decisions with our partner, and if we’d like to do something different in the future or would like to compete it in the future we now own that infrastructure,” Abreu said.
Bill Toti, HP’s vice president for and account executive for Navy and Marine Corps programs, said the Marines have already covered the cost of buying its share of the NMCI infrastructure, and the Navy is still making payments to gain ownership.
The Department of the Navy plans to re-compete NMCI after the current five-year NGEN contract expires.
Harris Corp. [HRS] and Computer Sciences Corp. [CSC], who had partnered for NGEN, each filed protests with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) following the June award to HP. CSC later withdrew its protest, and the GAO ruled against Harris in November, a ruling that was postponed because of the October government shutdown that kept the program under a longer stop-work order than would normally accompany a protest.
NGEN is the follow-on to the Navy Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI) and is intended to provide secure, net-centric data and services to 800,000 Navy and Marine Corps personnel and connects to 400,000 workstations. NMCI is largest intranet in the U.S. government and began in 2000 under a contract with Electronic Data Systems, which HP acquired in 2008.