New NGEN acquisition approach under consideration

The Navy is considering a fresh acquisition approach for its Next-Generation Enterprise Network program, reports FederalNewsRadio.

Capt. Tim Holland, the NGEN program manager, said his office is reviewing 43 white papers from industry and the trends point to a multiple-award contract broken down into eight functional areas.

The Navy awarded EDS a 10-year, $10 billion Navy-Marine Corps Intranet contract in 2000. The service used a seat management approach where EDS was responsible for end-to-end management of the network.

With NGEN, however, the Navy believes times have changed enough that it needs a different approach. The service plans to release the solicitation next spring.

One critical change envisioned is that the Navy will have more operational and network control. The idea is one of the lessons learned from the Navy's experience with NMCI. Others lessons learned include the importance of having one network for the entire enterprise.

Holland says, as of now, the Navy is breaking NGEN into eight functional areas:

• Storage and data services
• End user computing, which includes the desktop and all the peripherals that go with it such as the printer
• Network, both wide-area and local-area connectivity
• Applications management
• Help-desk support
• Information assurance
• Coordination across the enterprise
• Program management, contract management network operations, architectural control and design, all those functions the Navy wants to keep in house

The Navy is in the final review stages of its service specifications for all eight segments. The service will publish those specifications in the next two to three weeks for industry to comment on, Holland said. In addition, the Navy will hold an industry day in December to discuss these requirements.