The Navy Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI) program seeks to replace all desktop computers at Navy and Marine Corps facilities with "rented" machines from EDS Corporation. The machines are specified as Dell computers with Intel processors and Windows operating systems. It has been touted by some as an efficient way of obtaining Information Technology (IT) assets, but holds many direct and hidden costs and problems that the public has not been made aware of, except in some computing and federal employee-interest publications. Here are a few points worth mentioning :

1. Direct Cost. NMCI claims that it will cost less than the current systems in place. This is simply not true. The cost of a basic "seat" ( the terminology used for a desktop system ) is $232.34 per month or approximately $2800 per year, based on the rate schedules posted on the intranet of a Navy laboratory. This is for a bare-bones Dell computer with a processor that is on the verge of obsolescence ( a 566 MHz Intel Celeron ) and a basic software suite. Based on some prices I had seen on the Dell website some time ago, the purchase price of the system is approximately $700. The remaining "cost" is claimed to be in "support". If someone does have a Windows PC already that meets with EDS's approval, they can connect it to the EDS network - assuming they pay a $2500 "service fee" per year for the privelege of having a network connection ! ( Sound like a rip-off to you ? ) Do you really think that it costs that much per year to plug a computer into a network port ? Even cable modem services available at home cost roughly $50 per month or $600 per year - and you get a high-speed connection, with email accounts and support. The NMCI approach is the "Rent-a-Center" mentality run amok !

 2. Hidden Costs. The direct costs are bad enough, but the hidden costs add further to the problem. At Navy Research and Development (R&D) facilities, the engineers and scientists there have the task of being the innovators for our Fleet. To do their jobs, they need various and high quality computers. Many use Macintosh or Unix computers and have, over the years, written a large amount of custom analysis programs for solving the problems that we have encountered in our work. NMCI threatens to make this large volume of work useless.

 Because NMCI will take over the entire network infrastructure, it has been made policy that the only computers that will be allowed to be connected to the network are those that have been rented from EDS or those Windows only machines that pay the $2500 per year "service fee". This means that even if users can declare their Macintosh and Unix computers to be legacy systems, they will be unable to send/receive email on them, access the internet, print to the network printers, etc. Assuming that only 5% of the people at a given lab face this situation ( I suspect the figure is higher  in most cases ) based on a direct man-year rate of $180,000 per man-year and assuming that each affected person has invested one man-year of work on custom tools in their careers, the value lost to the Navy and the taxpayer is $22,500,000 just at that one lab. ( And this does not include the purchase costs of the software tools that were used on the platforms that will be rendered useless by NMCI nor does it include the costs of the computers themselves. )

 Worse still, Navy scientists and engineers have been told that they cannot install third-party software that they might need on NMCI computers; they must either "rent" it from EDS, or buy it themselves and turn it over to EDS for "certification" and then they will take ownership of it and install it on a shared server. A very costly and inefficient process, I'm sure you would agree.

3. Security. NMCI has been touted as a way of improving security. This is not entirely true. By forcing every Navy and Marine Corps facility to use Windows, the Pentagon is opening the door to many dangers. The security vulnerabilities of Windows are well known and documented. It is one of the easiest operating systems to compromise in part because of its open-registry architecture. In fact, the German Bundeswehr ( Army ) recently announced that it was banning the use of Windows on IT systems containing critical information because of the security threat it [Windows] poses. ( Source : Der Spiegel, "Bundeswehr verbannt Microsoft-Programme", March 17, 2001. ) And our Navy wants to make this the standard ?

Protection from viruses is another feature being promoted by NMCI. This also is a fallacy as we need only look at the rash of viruses that were in the news last year to see how vulnerable Windows is to such things. Many Navy labs were in fact victimized by the so-called "I Love You" virus and others, and a lot of data on Windows machines was no doubt lost. However, users of Macintosh and Unix machines were completely immune, since these viruses are written so as to exploit the open registry design of Windows. Taking away the Macintosh and Unix machines from the desktop environment merely opens Navy and Marine Corps facilities to more of these attacks and makes the facilites more susceptible to damage from them.

 4. Legality. There are some legal issues surrounding NMCI that have been brought up in the computing media. One common theme is that NMCI appears to be an attempt to sidestep Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) concerning sole-source purchases. In essence, NMCI is a sole-source acquisition for Dell computers with Intel processors and Windows operating systems. Yet no Sole Source Justification has been provided nor approved, as required by FAR.

Furthermore, NMCI represents a multi-billion dollar contract to EDS, that has been set up, based on the information that I have heard and been told, without the Congressional oversight that has been customary with other large contracts - e.g. Seawolf submarine, B-2 bomber, etc. This is an affront to the authority of the Congress on expenditures of this type.

It's also odd, don't you think, that the Department of Justice is fighting Microsoft an an illegal monopoly ( a federal judge did issue a finding of fact that Microsoft is a monopoly ) while at the same time the Department of the Navy is helping to further their monopoly by declaring that only Windows machines can use their network ???

 5. Job Losses. As a result of NMCI, it is estimated that several thousand civilian employees working in IT positions within the Department of the Navy will lose their jobs. For this reason, and for its high cost, NMCI is being vigorously opposed by the National Association of Government Employees (NAGE) union. [ Source : NAGE Press Release, "NAGE Continues Its Fight Against Navy Marine Corps Intranet", April 18, 2001. http://www.nage.org/press.html]  For reference, I am not a member of NAGE, nor am I writing at their request or suggestion.

The only way that NMCI can be stopped is by Congressional action. If you are as upset as I about this ridiculous waste of our tax dollars, write to your Representative in the House and to your Senators ! The only way that they will hear about this is if we tell them !

You can contact your Representative with the via the following link :

http://www.house.gov/writerep/

and your Senators via :

http://www.senate.gov/senators/senator_by_state.cfm