Navy releases drafts on NGEN management
By
Nick Wakeman
The Navy has released several documents that describe how it will manage the next iteration of its $3.5 billion NGEN contract, including the kind of quality assurance requirements it will put on its contractors.
The Navy has released several documents that describe how it will manage the next iteration of its $3.5 billion NGEN contract and detail the kind of quality assurance requirements it will put on its contractors.
The draft documents describe how the Navy will manage the next contract once the awards are made.
For example, there is one draft that is called the Demand Management Process Guide that describes how the Navy will “ensure that the service provider meets or exceeds the current and future agreed requirements of user and system resource demand.”
NGEN is currently held by DXC Technologies, which inherited the contract through the CSC-HPE Enterprise Services merger earlier this year. The contract is for the management of the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet, the infrastructure for the Navy’s desktop computing. There are about 700,000 users at 2,500 sites, according to the Navy.
The contract dates back to EDS Corp., which the former Hewlett-Packard acquired. HP split in two, then Hewlett-Packard Enterprise took NGEN. HPE then divested its enterprise services business that merged with CSC to create DXC.
There are still no firm timeframe for the release of a solicitation and an award, but NGEN expires in June 2018. And instead of a single contract, the Navy appears to be headed toward two contracts: one for hardware and a second one for services.
In addition to DXC, other major systems integrators such as CSRA and Leidos have indicated interest in pursuing the contract. CSRA was created in 2015 when the old CSC jettisoned its government business and merged it with SRA International. While it was still part of CSC, the government business competed against HPE for the NGEN contract and lost.
So while some of the deck chairs have been shuffled around, the competitive landscape hasn’t changed that much.
With this latest drop of draft documents, the Navy is looking for feedback on asset management, availability management, capacity management and demand management. The document describe how the Navy will conducted quality assurance as work under the contracts progress.
Several of the documents have incorporated changes from comments on earlier drafts.
The Navy wants feedback by Sept. 22.