Intercepts

The N/MCI Glass Ceiling...

...has been broken. My mobile receiving station parked outside the Naval

Air Systems Command in Patuxent River, Md., reports that a woman will be

leading the first effort to roll out the Navy/Marine Corps Intranet.

Susan Keen has been appointed the first chief information officer of

Navair and will be responsible for spearheading the IT effort at the first

command to enter the N/MCI Age. Low-level signals indicate that Keen, who

has risen up through the ranks at Navair, is in the process of putting together

a core team of advisers and crafting Navair's future technology road map.

With Keen at the helm, we at least know the first N/MCI project will be

done right.

Substantive Rumors

Rumors about the Marine Corps pulling out of N/MCI spread like wildfire

last week, starting in Hawaii and blowing across the continent before finally

stopping on the Interceptor's desk. I immediately set out in search of some

middle ground.

"I think it's an unfounded rumor," said Ron Turner, the Navy's deputy

chief information officer for infrastructure, systems and technology. "No

substance to this," said a senior Marine Corps official involved in the

contract. But the official went on to say, "We have always been concerned

about the final costs of N/MCI and the affordability to the Marine Corps,

and until we have that info, we're not in a position to make that determination.

Time will tell. Ask again in about a month."

No Sleep for Raduege

Air Force Lt. Gen. Harry Raduege Jr. told the Interceptor last week

that since taking up the post of director of the Defense Information Systems

Agency on June 8, he's spent a grand total of about seven days in his office.

The rest of the time, he said, has been spent out and about "interfacing"

with DISA customers. The net result has been a lot of frequent flyer miles

and very little sleep.

His latest trip included a visit to the commanders in chief at the U.S.

Special Operations Command and Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base,

Tampa, Fla. His first order of business was to find out what DISA has done

for them lately, where DISA has fallen short and what they need DISA to

do for them in the future, he said.

I have a feeling that we may see a radically different DISA under Raduege's

leadership, including "a new emphasis on meaningful metrics" to measure

security compliance and a focus on "decision superiority" instead of that

buzz phrase we all pretend to understand: information superiority.

Mean Times for DMS

My Defense Message System code talkers sent me a copy of the minutes

from the March DMS Joint Logistics Management Team meeting. The military

services are trying to get the current 26-hour "mean time to restore" DMS

services requirement changed to a more reasonable two, four or eight hours.

However, this would require issuing a request for proposals and preparing

a cost estimate, according to the minutes.

Boost for BPAs

My industry code talkers were reporting that the series of enterprise

blanket purchase agreements engineered by Rex Bolton of DOD's Enterprise

Software Initiative was withering on the vine. A few months ago, these things

were the envy of IT shops throughout the department. But nobody seems to

be buying from them anymore. That is, except for 30,000 Microsoft Corp.

BackOffice Server fans. My Pentagon E-ring listening post reports that the

Redmond, Wash., software giant is poised to give ESI a boost through a $20

million contract for the BackOffice suite across DOD.

Intercept something? Send it to the Interceptor at antenna@fcw.com.