Navy will buy PCs for recruits
Navy officials included the Cyber Seabag program, an effort to procure notebook PCs each year for incoming recruits, in the service's 2002 Program Objective Memorandum, said Daniel E. Porter, Navy chief information officer.
Navy officials included the Cyber Seabag program, an effort to procure notebook PCs each year for incoming recruits, in the service's 2002 Program Objective Memorandum, said Daniel E. Porter, Navy chief information officer.
'We ran out of time'' in the 2000 and 2001 budget submissions, he said. Porter estimated the Navy could lease or buy the notebook PCs for $25 million to $30 million annually.
It will be great for sailors' morale and improve retention, he said. 'The demographics of the future is that everyone goes to high school, where they become cyberskillful. We don't want them to become cyberpoor'' as Navy sailors, he said. It will be good politically and a tax write-off for vendors because Navy officials plan to donate older notebook PCs to schools under the Cyber Seabag program, he said.
Marine Corps officials have assembled project teams to perform site surveys of major installations, using business practices developed by GartnerGroup Inc. of Stamford, Conn.
'It was kind of great being a logistician and seeing how the technology is used that I support,' said Maj. Jeffrey Lee, the deputy program manager for logistics at the Marine Corps Systems Command. He was the team leader for an information technology utilities study for a contractor team at Camp Pendleton, Calif., last month.
Having already studied leasing vs. buying for Marine Corps supporting establishments, the site survey teams were using GartnerGroup's total cost of ownership methodology for making a seat management analysis, Lee said. Final recommendations are due from a vendor this month.
The Marine Corps has done extensive site surveys, said Ron Turner, the Navy's deputy CIO for infrastructure, systems and technology, and the data will be used for the Navy Marine Corps Intranet procurement.
The Navy, meanwhile, will do about 20 site surveys as a part of its business case analysis, he said. For the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet, officials will extrapolate from the data to draft the request for proposals and make awards.
Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command officials are cutting the number of IT Umbrella Program contracts from 50 to 35, said Nikki Isfahani, the program director.
'We can reduce our overhead and the contractor's overhead'' by cutting down on blanket purchasing agreements that are redundant or don't sell well, she said.
Although Navy officials are reviewing the IT Umbrella Program's contracting practices, Isfahani said, there's no moratorium on BPAs. 'The BPAs that the Umbrella Program awarded were competed before award,'' she said. Find more program information at www.it-umbrella.navy.mil.
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