DOD's deputy CIO leaving government for Internet start-up

Marv Langston, deputy assistant secretary of Defense and the Pentagon's deputy chief information officer, plans to leave the department at the end of this month to become the chief operating officer of a small, World Wide Web-based start-up company that plans to use interactive media to promote healthy lifestyles.

Langston, who previously served as CIO of the Department of the Navy, said leaving the Defense Department for Santa Barbara, Calif.-based Salus Media (www.salusmedia.com) "is a big change for me and a difficult decision, but I am anxious to apply my DOD background to this worthwhile endeavor."

News of Langston's quick move to the private sector emerged just a day after John Hamre, deputy secretary of Defense, announced his plans to leave the Pentagon to head the Center for Strategic and International studies.

Hamre applied the clout of his office — the No. 2 post in the Pentagon — to a wide variety of information technology issues, and Langston worked closely with him on a number of issues including an ongoing assessment of how DOD should manage its global networks more responsively in the future.

Both were viewed as strong backers of the $10 billion Navy/Marine Corps Intranet (N/MCI) project, which plans to set up an infrastructure outside the DOD networks operated by the Defense Information Systems Agency. Industry sources raised concerns that N/MCI (www.contracts.hq.navsea.navy.mil/nmci) has lost two of its strongest proponents prior to the critical budget hearings in Congress this spring.