Navy CIO office reduces staff by half
The Navy is cutting half of the 50 positions in its CIO office in an effort to reduce costs and job overlap.
'It's a much tighter working relationship to implement departmentwide IT stuff,' Ron Turner, deputy Navy CIO, said of the new structure.
The move follows a six-week study of the office's workflow and will affect both military and civilian employees by April 2003.
Ron Turner, deputy CIO for infrastructure, systems and technology, said a team assembled by Navy Secretary Gordon England initiated the study to tighten jobs. The panel concluded that 25 positions in the CIO office could be eliminated for an annual savings of $10 million.
The restructuring also places the CIO office under England's staff. Under the agreement, the Navy will go back to a single CIO structure.
There is now a Navy Department CIO, a Marine Corps CIO and a Navy CIO, and job duties in these positions often overlap, Turner said. Instead of the three separate CIOs, the Navy and Marine leaders will become deputies under the departmentwide CIO, Turner said.
Staff transfers
Of the 25 positions that will be cut, three are military and the others civilian, Turner said. The military workers will be reassigned when their terms are up.
Several more employees will be transferred to work on the Navy's IT budget, and the rest will likely be placed in other divisions, he said.
'It's a much tighter working relationship to implement departmentwide IT stuff,' Turner said of the new structure.
The team examined each position in the office to determine which could be eliminated, Turner said.
'We wanted to go back to the old way when we first set up the CIO office,' Turner said.
Turner said some of the functions that will be moved include knowledge management, wireless policy and spectrum planning.
In addition to the restructuring, there is plenty of movement in the Navy's IT leadership. Dan Porter retired as the Navy Department CIO earlier this month to become the senior vice president for strategic development at Vredenburg Inc. of Reston, Va., and his replacement has not been named.
Turner also plans to retire next month, and Alex Bennet, the deputy CIO for enterprise integration, left the Navy earlier this year.