Waiting for NGEN… Here we go again… Another NGEN delay

Bob Gourley

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Here we go again. Another NGEN delay. The program office announced this week that they have “re-entered discussions” with the offerors – HP and a team led by CSC. This program has been so long in the making it’s hard to stay positive. By the time anything gets delivered, industry standards will be several generations ahead.

One of these days, the Navy’s Next Generation Enterprise Network will replace the Navy and Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI). The main objective here is to reduce costs and buy back some of the outsourced infrastructure. This buy back is essential BEFORE advanced capabilities can be implemented. A few such advances could be smart sensor data discrimination, enhanced data links, assured positioning, navigation and timing services and other key enablers of the Navy’s future vision.

Meanwhile, more money keeps getting pumped into the existing bridge contract (Continuity of Services) to keep the lights on. Every time I hear the dollar amount estimated for the new NGEN contract, it’s less than the last time I heard it. At the Navy Information Dominance Day a few weeks ago, $4 Billion was quoted as the amount. The current delay to “re-enter discussions” on technical/pricing issues might result in additional cuts to the contract.

The Joint Information Environment (JIE) hyped by DISA and now adopted by all the services has continued to gain steam. It wasn’t even alive when the requirements for the NGEN contract were derived. I expect that some of this delay is a result of revisiting contract line-items in response to aligning to the JIE.

Navy has been working on this follow on contract for over a decade. It’s time to get this thing awarded… so that the FOLLOW ON NGEN Contract can be constructed!

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