By Geoff Fein
Earlier this month the Navy issued a sole source solicitation to Electronic Data Systems (EDS) [HPQ] for a Continuity of Services Contract (COSC) that will be used to provide information technology services during the transition from the existing Navy and Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI) contract to the proposed NextGeneration Enterprise Network (NGEN) solution.
Currently, EDS owns the infrastructure that supports NMCI. As the Navy moves forward into the NGEN environment, the service has to come to a disposition of that infrastructure–whether the Navy will keep it forever or decide that that component isn’t needed anymore, Robert Carey, chief information officer for the Navy, told Defense Daily in a recent interview.
“So in the COSC contract, we will come up with and work through that disposition whether, it is buy, lease, or some combination thereof,” he said.
COSC is really the first step in moving into the NGEN environment, Carey added.
The Navy will shortly begin formal negotiations with EDS, Gary Federici, deputy assistant secretary, Navy for command control computers communications and intelligence (DASN C4I) and Space systems, told Defense Daily during the same interview.
At least 300 companies attended the last Navy NGEN industry day, Carey noted. And many of those in attendance represented small companies.
While it is recognized that a small company likely won’t be capable of running the entire NGEN program, those companies do bring new ideas to the table.
“You are going to find the genius today in small companies because the large companies will buy them up,” Federici said. “Large companies don’t need to spend a lot on R&D; they can buy it. I think you are starting to see that trend.”
The only downside, Carey added, is that their technologies have to scale to the vast number of NGEN users.
“The only downside to small companies…and I have told many of them this…I have 800,000 people. Scale for me is big scale. Your stuff has to scale to that,” he said.
A good example of a small innovative company is In-Q-Tel, Federici said. “I have become a big fan of the In-Q-tel venture capitalist.”
According to its website, In-Q-Tel identifies and partners with companies developing cutting-edge technologies to help deliver these solutions to the Central Intelligence Agency and the broader U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) to further their missions.
“I had reservations back in the ’90s,” Federici said. “At NRO (National Reconnaissance Office), we tried this years and years ago and it didn’t work. In-Q-Tel has been a great success story. [They] find these small vendors who have very valuable intellectual property…[and] would be very valuable to work problems at the IC (intelligence community) level, or the Navy level.
And In-Q-Tel finds the big system integrator to help take an idea and integrate in into this big morass that they might never have attempted to crack before, Carey added. “But now they have like a big brother that is going to help them do that.”
Federici said In-Q-Tel is a good model and probably needs to be looked at by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD). “OSD has a similar model, but it’s not as robust by any means.”