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Navy Uncovers Billions of Under-the-Radar IT Expenses; Janice Haith Comments

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HaithThe U.S. Navy has uncovered under-the-radar IT expenses separate from the Navy-Marine Corps intranet which was meant to reduce the level of disparate systems, according to Jared Serbu for Federal News Radio.

The discovery was made only two years ago as officials decided to trim 25 percent off the Navy’s IT costs.

Janice Haith, the Department of the Navy’s deputy CIO spoke during the AFCEA Northern Virginia luncheon in Vienna, Va. last Friday and said the information technology comprehensive cost estimate for Fiscal 2011 increased to $9 billion from $7 billion after an investigation.

They are raising the estimate to $11 billion for IT costs this year.

Haith said over 302 legacy and straggling networks were uncovered and included servers, data centers, applications and software licenses all despite consolidation efforts under the NMCI.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert gave the department until March 2014 to eliminate the hidden networks, she said.

They were using the monthly Navy Enterprise Information Technology Guidance Board to deliberate who will transfer to the enterprise environment but they have now stopped approving waiver applications.

Haith said that networks which have not assimilated with NMCI when the deadline is reached will not be included in the Next Generation Enterprise Network (NGEN).

The Navy’s space and naval warfare systems command is also currently determining the exact number of existing server facilities around the world and which can be retired.

Haith said there are over 210 data centers maintaining 32,000 servers and they have little idea of the exact expenses of these operations.

She went on to say the Navy wants to scale back data centers to only 25 locations because heavy reliance on the servers have ballooned hardware procurement to over $500 million annually.

Surplus data centers were commonly used for specific missions, most of which were not compliant with existing regulations, so dismembering them would not impact another server.

Another challenge the Navy has to face is consolidating software licenses. They entered into an enterprise wide licensing agreement for Microsoft products last year and are expecting to sign a deal with Oracle and 17 other providers next.

Still, Navy officials are clueless on the software licenses the Navy has paid for and currently owns because of the absence of an IT assessment tool.

The Navy has already ordered another round of 25 percent reduction for IT spending in 2013, prompting Haith to issue a memo to hold big IT purchases.

1 Comment

  1. Great story. This really demonstrates the need of all organizations to have personnel whose sole purpose is to keep track of IT expenditures, licenses, & various other IT related issues. I can see where the US Navy would have legacy hardware & software that would be difficult to integrate into any current setup.
    Also, a human spellchecker may be needed for this article as “complaint” should obviously be “compliant”. I have yet to see a computer understand the correct choice based on context.

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