By Amber Corrin
The Army has once again resumed migrating accounts to its enterprise e-mail system as of March 19, after Congress ordered a suspension of operations in the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, according to the Army deputy CIO.
“The Army [enterprise e-mail] report was delivered to Congress on Feb. 16, 2012. The Secretary of the Army certified that the Army's acquisition approach is in the best technical and financial interests of the Army, and provides for the maximum amount of competition possible,” Mike Krieger said in a post on the Army CIO blog. “The Army’s acquisition of DOD [enterprise e-mail] services is now a formal acquisition program.”
In December 2011, a provision in the NDAA suspended the Army’s enterprise e-mail funding pending reports submitted to Congress that detail how it fits in with broader Defense Department enterprise e-mail plans, the use of fair and open competition in upgrading DOD enterprise e-mail architecture and how the DOD CIO is handling the e-mail capabilities of the other military services.
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Posted on Mar 23, 2012 at 1:32 PM1 comments
Growth in defense spending during the past decade of war spurred the expansion of industry to support wartime requirements, but as the Defense Department faces a drop in spending commensurate with the drawdown of military operations, the private sector must also expect to shrink.
According to Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the average ratio of troops to contractors is now less than 1:1 – as opposed to during the Revolutionary War, when it was 6:1, a DOD release stated.
“It can’t keep going that way,” Dempsey said March 6 at Joint Operational Contract Support Leaders Conference in Washington.
According to a report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) released last May, spending on contract goods and services spiked during the past decade.
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Posted on Mar 07, 2012 at 12:52 PM3 comments
After migration issues, Microsoft patching, adjustments to tactics, techniques and procedures and some serious hurdles in funding – all of which the Army says have been or will soon be fixed – will 2012 be the year Defense Department enterprise e-mail transcends the rhetoric and speaks for itself?
Maybe not. If DOD enterprise e-mail’s had a murky existence so far, its future is practically opaque. In fact, there are more questions than ever, including three big ones.
Some background: A little less than a year ago, the focus was mostly on Army enterprise e-mail, since it was – and still is – the only service implementing the program. There were questions as to if and when the other services would join, but most concern centered on the technical difficulties the Defense Information Systems Agency and Army CIO were having in migrating e-mail accounts.
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Posted on Jan 19, 2012 at 1:29 PM2 comments