The Navy is considering awarding multiple contracts for the recompete of the Next Generation Enterprise Network (NGEN) instead of relying on a single contractor to run the network, program officials said Wednesday.
That final acquisition strategy hasn’t yet been set in stone, but will be cemented this fall, Capt. Michael Abreu, Naval Enterprise Networks program manager, told reporters during an industry day meant to spread information and solicit ideas from potential vendors.
“What we’re trying to get after is, what are the best industry practices today in commercial network space in terms of how they manage and how they procure in the most cost effective and affordable way to deliver capability,” he said. That could mean segmenting the contract to get the best deal from multiple companies.
The service tentatively plans to first release a draft request for proposals (RFP) for hardware such as desktop computers, laptops and tablets by the end of the year, with a final RFP following several months after. RFPs for other potential segments will be released in 2017. The hope is to award contracts before the current NGEN services run out in June 2018, allowing the Navy to dovetail smoothly from one vendor to another.
Currently, the Navy purchases end user hardware services as part of a bundle with other network services, but purchasing it separately could yield benefits, he said.
“It helps us drive some more affordabilty into that piece of the business, and it helps us maintain our ability to keep that separate in the budget,” giving the Navy a greater level of financial control.
The Navy could also compete out other “bundles” related to productivity services such as voice and video teleconferencing, cloud delivery, transport services and service management and integration, said Philip Anderson, NGEN deputy program manager.
What it doesn’t want to see is a purpose-built, military-specific solution, he said. “However you deliver services to your commercial customers, however you do that for your other federal customers, just do the same thing for us.”
Hewlett Packard [HPQ] currently holds the NGEN contact and provides services related to the Navy Marine Corps Intranet. Before the advent of NGEN, it both owned the infrastructure and operated the network, which is used by more than 700,000 users at more than 2,500 sites.
However, service officials later realized that it would be more effective to own the infrastructure and have industry compete to provide network services, spawning the NGEN program. Government ownership of the network and its associated infrastructure has delivered several advantages, Abreu said.
“We have much more control of the network, we have control of the business decisions and business cases that we use. We have processes that we use internally to determine what technologies should be used when they make business sense from an affordability, scalability sense,” he said. “We work with HP, but we are in firm control of those decisions and we have processes in place to make sure we go through those business decisions in a calculated manner.”
In the first NGEN contract, the Navy allowed industry to bid on two segments, enterprise and transport services, but vendors took a “holistic” approach in their bids, with one provider managing all services, he said. “We elected to go forward with that in the NGEN award,” but that could change in the recompete.