The world’s largest and most troubled intranet is moving forward with a $3.1 billion program extension. The
The consolidated voice, video and data network links hundreds of thousands of military and at its peak will connect more than 500,000 sailors and Marines at about 1,000 locations across the planet.
The project has been greatly troubled but with both EDS and the Pentagon at odds over costs. According to GCN.com (Navy, EDS avert NMCI divorce at least for now), both parties “recently resolved long-standing claims over the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet program, with the Navy agreeing to fork over $100 million to settle the contract dispute.”
EDS purportedly has lost a lot of money on the multi-billion dollar project and was said to have been seeking more than $780 million from the Navy in additional costs. Mainly “what it lost on the Pentagon IT reconstitution after Sept. 11, 2001, and the expenses associated with reducing legacy applications and maintaining dual desktops,” according to Lt. John Gay, a Navy spokesman quoted on GCN.com.
One
“(NMCI) is one of the most customer-unfriendly operations that I think I’ve ever seen.”
He said he had heard “horror stories” about the system. NMCI is “fundamentally hostile” to letting people communicate, he argued, adding the Navy is wasting money trying to fix and implement the system.
“It’s designed to provide such a security in inter-Navy e-mail that no one is communicating,” Kirk said. He said there is a “parallel Navy” running on civilian e-mail accounts.
(Thanks to The Fourth Rail and Bill Roggio).
-- Meanwhile the Navy is adding now audio alternatives for feature articles on its Lifelines intranet (Navy adds audio to Lifelines intranet). As reported on CGN.com, the Navy is using Since March, two former Navy officers with backgrounds in broadcast journalism who now work on the Lifelines Services Network site at http://www.lifelines.navy.mil have lent their voices to narrate articles that can be downloaded to MP3 players and iPods. RELATED ITEMS: Good news and good news for world’s largest and most troubled intranet $9 Billion Bugs for U.S. Navy-Marine Corps Intranet
“We started noticing at the Washington Navy Yard and other bases all of the young sailors going around with iPods and MP3 players, and we said why don’t we start recording these things,” said retired Navy Capt. William Hendrix, director of the Lifelines portal.
To accomplish the podcast-like feature, the site uses digital audio software designed by GoldWave Inc. of
The Navy established the LifeLines portal in January 1999 as an intranet to improve the quality of life for sailors. Among its offerings, the portal provides self-help information, education services and crisis assistance.