Navy/Marine Corps Intranet - History

History

On October 6, 2000, the NMCI contract was awarded to Electronic Data Systems (EDS), now Hewlett Packard (HP). Secretary of the Navy Gordon England summed up the Navy’s IT Environment prior to the commencement of NMCI: “We basically had 28 separate commands budgeting, developing, licensing, and operating IT autonomously. It was inefficient and from the larger Department perspective, produced results that were far from optimal.”

NMCI consolidated roughly 6,000 networks—some of which could not e-mail, let alone collaborate with each other—into a single integrated and secure IT environment. HP updated more than 100,000 desktop and laptop PCs in 2007. The program also consolidated an ad hoc network of more than 8,000 applications to 500 in four years and 15,003 logistics and readiness systems to 2,759 over a two-year period.

Sub-contractors to HP include:

• Apple Inc., Cisco, Dell, McAfee, Microsoft, Oracle Corporation, Sun Microsystems, and Symantec
• Harris Corporation (which acquired Multimax formerly known as Netco Government Services and WAM!NET), which provides enterprise network infrastructure design and support.
• Verizon, which provides wide area network (WAN) connectivity.

HP also provides the security services once provided by Raytheon.

HP also has worked with more than 400 small businesses, with 5 percent for small disadvantaged businesses, 5 percent for women-owned small businesses and 1.5 percent for HUB Zone small businesses. Since its inception, NMCI has exceeded the minimum 40% small business objective set for the contract.

NMCI quickly suffered some widely publicized setbacks, including rollout delays that caused HP financial losses. Today, NMCI is described in documents from the Navy’s Chief Information Officer as “the core enterprise network for Navy and Marine Corps forces in the United States and Japan, providing secure access to integrated voice, video and data communications.”

In 2009 NMCI became the first network to deploy the Global Address List (GAL), a multiservice address list that increases interoperability by enabling Navy and Marine Corps users to access the Defense Information Systems Agency’s Joint Enterprise Directory Services (JEDS) contact list.

Additional improvements to network performance are also underway with the deployment of the Network Operations Common Operating Picture (NetOps COP). The tool helps provide enhanced situational awareness via increased information sharing and collaboration to commanders by giving them a common picture of network performance. Commanders can see scheduled maintenance tasks and other issues impacting the network, giving them the option to defer work that might affect the flow of critical information from the battlefield.

Work in 2008 has increased NMCI’s ability to respond to security issues and the program was the first network to implement fully the Department of Defense information assurance standards in both classified and unclassified environments. Among the enhancements were the deployment of Websense content filtering, an information assurance tool designed to inspect and block inbound Web traffic containing malicious code with little impact to the user. According to NMCI public affairs, "Websense allows the Network Operational Commands to set a tailored blocking policy by content such as gambling, hate speech or adult content, rather than blocking specific sites or URLs only. This allows the network operators to block sites much more efficiently and outsources the fight against the growing amount of inappropriate content."

According to the Navy, Websense enables users to block or unblock sites, based on emerging and/or dynamic threats. The NMCI blocking policy is determined by various operational commands, such as the Naval Network Warfare Command, and enforced by the Global Network Operations Center, based in Norfolk. Blocked sites are redirected to a notification page which then links to a page on NMCI's homeport Web site. On this site, a user can submit a request that a site be unblocked in order to support mission requirements.

In addition, NMCI is upgrading existing servers with Bluecoat proxy servers, which provides better capacity and traffic management functions. According to NMCI’s own data, a few users account for the majority of NMCI's bandwidth usage, mostly attributed to streaming internet radio and video. New servers will allow bandwidth usage monitoring, down to a command or user level.

The security upgrades have been well received by the Navy. On March 31, 2009, Rear Admiral (Ret.) John A. Gauss, Acquisition Director for the NGEN System Program Office (SPO) said during a press conference that “NMCI is the most secure network within the Navy.”

The Navy and HP measure end user satisfaction through a series of quarterly satisfaction surveys. End user satisfaction has steadily improved, reaching a high of nearly 86% in February 2008, as compared to 80% in December 2006. This is largely due to the upgrade of nearly 112,000 desktop and laptop computers in 2007, and a combination of network enhancements that are improving speed and reliability. HP is on track to upgrade another 120,000 seats in 2008 at Navy and Marine Corps bases in the US and Asia.

Working in tandem with the technology refresh are the virtualization efforts on the network. NMCI is on track to move from 2,700 servers down to roughly 300. The efforts are expected to save more than $1.6 million per year in electricity costs. Additionally, the decrease in the number of servers being refreshed will lower the cost of updating the equipment, leading to a potential savings of at least $1.5 million over four years.

A highlight of the Navy’s virtualization efforts was its win of InfoWorld’s 2009 Green 15 Award, which honors 15 companies and/or organizations for their green IT projects. Ted Samson, Senior Analyst for InfoWorld said of the honorees, "This year's Green 15 winners demonstrate, once again, that green IT projects can be a win-win proposition. These organizations have not only helped the planet by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, preserving trees, and keeping e-waste out of landfills. They've also reaped measurable business benefits, such as significantly lower electricity bills, fewer hardware refreshes, and postponed datacenter-expansion projects -- along with gains in efficiency and productivity."

In 2006, the NMCI program office was criticized for its annual customer-satisfaction surveys. Officials refuse to release the raw data, leading to accusations that their conclusions are overly sunny. One NMCI director, Rear Admiral James B. Godwin III, said releasing the results would challenge the "integrity of our data."

The Department of the Navy has shown no desire to scale back or cancel the program. On 24 March 2006 the Navy exercised its three-year, $3 billion option to extend the contract through September 2010.

In April 2006, users began to log on with Common Access Cards (CACs), a smartcard-based logon system called the Cryptographic Log On (CLO). In October 2008, NMCI’s prime contractor HP posted a set of procedures so Apple Mac users can access NMCI's public-facing Web services, such as the e-mail and calendar functions, using their CAC readers with their Macs. The workaround also works with other Defense Department CAC-enabled networks. Alternatively, NMCI and all other CAC-authenicated DoD websites may be accessed using LPS-Public.

After early challenges, the Navy is pleased with the performance and security of the NMCI network. According to Capt. Tim Holland, program manager for the Navy’s Next Generation Enterprise Network (NGEN), “NMCI is very robust today—we have good security with it, very good performance.” In an interview the DoN CIO Robert J. Carey stated, “The plan is that NGEN will be in place before the NMCI contract expires because it is not a renewable contract. According to the Navy, NMCI will serve as the baseline from which it will transition to NGEN.

The Navy’s confidence in NMCI today marks a significant turnaround from the challenges cited in the GAO’s report of December 2006. The report states that “ NMCI has not met its two strategic goals—to provide information superiority and to foster innovation via interoperability and shared services.” The document also goes on to evaluate HP’s performance, "GAO’s analysis of available performance data, however, showed that the Navy had met only 3 of 20 performance targets (15 percent) associated with the program’s goals and nine related performance categories."

In contrast are the more recent comments from Vice Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., deputy chief of naval operations for communication networks (OPNAV N-6) and deputy chief information officer, Department of the Navy. “I believe that NMCI in 2008 is achieving much of what we had hoped NMCI would achieve. It’s leveled the playing field for security. It’s allowed us to do things like push security patches that go through the whole enterprise that’s on NMCI. If you look at NMCI historically, it was probably the first step for the Navy to move into what was then called Joint Vision 2010 and now is Joint Vision 2020. It’s actually done that, and it’s moving the Navy toward the U.S. Defense Department’s goal of information superiority. So, I see a lot of good things with NMCI."

NMCI works today and it continues to improve as user needs evolve and technology opportunities arise. During the final two years of the contract, technology initiatives included new hardware, applications, and services to support the Navy and Marine Corps’ advanced IT needs. HP will install more than 110,000 new laptops and desktops, and will push more upgrades to improve end-users’ IT capabilities through upgraded machine capacity, new operating systems, and new service lines.