The Navy Marine Corps Intranet, a 10-year, $9.3 billion IT services program, has not met its two strategic goals of providing information superiority and fostering innovation via interoperability and shared services, GAO has said.
It said the Navy is buying network, application, and other hardware and software services at a fixed price per unit – or “seat” – to support about 550 sites through a performance-based contract.
Yet, while the Navy developed a performance plan in 2000, it did not implement it because it was more focused on deploying seats and measuring contractor performance against incentives specified in contracts, rather than determining if strategic goals were being met, according to GAO-07-51.
It said available performance data showed that the Navy had met only three of 20 performance targets associated with the program’s goals and nine related performance categories, and that by not implementing its performance plan, the Navy risks continuing to invest heavily in a program that is not subject to effective performance management and has yet to produce expected results.
After about six years and a $3.7 billion investment, it is unclear whether NMCI will meet expectations, GAO said.
It said contractors met performance-incentive thresholds for about 55 to 59 percent of all eligible seats in the most recent five-month period, which is a significant drop from the previous nine-month period.
It also said surveys indicated just 74 percent of end users are satisfied, but that the actual rate could be lower because the Navy includes many marginally satisfied and arguably somewhat dissatisfied users in that group.
