Web moratorium announced by Navy
A moratorium on the creation of new Web sites and portals, and the upgrading of existing ones, has been issued by the U.S. Navy in an effort to get the service in a better position for migration to the Defense Knowledge Online portal.
A moratorium on the creation of new Web sites and portals, and the upgrading of existing ones, has been issued by the U.S. Navy in an effort to cut infrastructure costs, eliminate duplication and, ultimately, get the service in a better position for migration to the Defense Knowledge Online portal.
The Navy currently has 85 portals and 3,700 publicly registered Web sites, according to Tina Donbeck, enterprise transformation section head in the Navy's CIO office. This doesn't account for the thousands more private Web sites maintained in the .com environment, Donbeck added.
Effective immediately, the service can incur no new obligations without approval from the OPNAV N6. The N6 serves as the principal adviser to the chief of naval operations on network-centric issues.
Existing portals will operate in maintenance mode until further notice, Donbeck said.
"This effort will accelerate the deployment of a Navy central point of entry to authoritative data, core enterprise services and Web-centric applications that are vital in delivering information to the warfighter," according to NAVADMIN 275/06 guidance that went out on Oct. 4.
The Navy is standing up a Navy Portal/Website Rationalization Integrated Process Team to work with the Naval Audit Service to ensure employees are in compliance with the moratorium. The Naval Audit Service is going to select commands and examine contracts to ensure there are no expenditures allocated on Web or portal upgrades and creation since the moratorium was issued.
As part of the Legacy Network Reduction initiative, the Navy is also sending a team of officials to installations to put sniffers on networks. In addition, Donbeck said, the Navy Information Operations Command in Norfolk, Va., is also helping to enforce the effort by going out to commands and pinging Web sites to see if they are in compliance.
The Defense Knowledge Online portal, being spearheaded by the Defense Information Systems Agency, will be a single, enterprisewide portal for the military services. The Army Knowledge Online portal is the foundation for DKO.
Dawn S. Onley is a staff writer for Washington Technology's sister publication, Government Computer News.