Rob Carey has been the Department of Navy [i.e., both the Navy and the Marine Corps] chief information officer for nearly to four years now and a regular presence in the DON CIO's Crystal City, Va. office for a decade.

He leaves that post around Labor Day (no firm date is set yet) to assume a job with the Navy 10^th Fleet/Cyber Command, in a position tentatively called director of policy and strategy.

Carey spoke with FierceGovernmentIT on June 30.

FGIT: What's your greatest accomplishment in your almost four years of being DON CIO?

Carey: I think the greatest accomplishment I've had is to help push out a galvanizing strategy called the Naval Networking Environment 2016.

That has been something that will benefit all, will incorporate green IT, will incorporate governance-based decision making, aka, more streamlined decision making and accountability. It will build out a smaller footprint, a right-sized footprint, access to information from any device at any time anywhere in the world. I take great pride on landing on a concept and a strategy that I found resonated with the department as a whole and was something effective and something efficient, as well.

FGIT: What's the status of NGEN and NNE 2016?

Carey: The status of NGEN right now is that a continuity of services contract with our incumbent, HP-EDS, will be awarded shortly. The planning for NGEN is underway and actually moving quite nicely toward our desired end state, which would be moving into a place where we have greater decision control, where we are the operators of the network. We're moving into a place where we can secure it and when U.S. Cybercom and now 10^th Fleet/Fleet Cybercom issues an edict, we can move more agilely through those gyrations than we were doing in the past.

The early transition activities are moving to an ITIL [Information Technology Infrastructure Library]-based network in order to bound how we discuss the processes that we use and how we manage our information systems. Everything right now is on schedule as it was advertised in the last six months to a year.

FGIT: Is this the second NMCI contract extension?

Carey: No. The continuity of services contract is a different contract than the present one we have with HP-EDS [which was extended in 2009 until Sept. 30]. The continuity of services contract is aimed at making sure that we have services provided to our users on Oct. 1 1 and for the immediate future after that. That being said, as soon as that is in place, we will begin to transition into the NGEN environment, as soon as is practicable.

FGIT: Wasn't the original timetable to have the NGEN provider or providers to have been selected by now?

Carey: Yes, originally we were going to go directly from NMCI to NGEN. We ran into some challenges in understanding how to move the big beast called NMCI into the future. We took some time to get that squared away, which we've done. But in the meantime, we wanted to make sure that we had a contract vehicle in place to maintain continuity. That will be awarded in the imminent future and it will be in effect on Oct. 1. The NMCI contract that exists today expires on Sept. 30, because was a 10-year service contract. Then the COSC contract takes effect, and the COSC contract is, in essence, the jumping off point into the NGEN environment.

FGIT: Is there any material difference between what HP-EDS is providing under NMCI as opposed to what they'll be providing under the COSC contract?

Carey: There are some -- for the most part, no. One of our objectives in NNE and one of our objectives overall is to regain decision authority and control over the network, which we will have, as well as a couple of other minor things. But the whole purpose of this was to ensure continuity. To actually not shake the tree too much by providing that springboard to the future.

FGIT: Is there a timeline for when the NGEN contract or contracts will be awarded.

Carey: I can't share that yet. But we have a plan to move into the future once the COSC contract is in place and we're operating off of that. We're moving from NMCI to COSC to NGEN and moving ourselves into the NNE environment. We'll be on this continuous journey of homogenizing our network architecture and shoring up our security infrastructure to be more defendable, more enterprise in nature, and allowing the ability of our network operators, whether it's 10^th Fleet or Marine Forces Cyber, to defend it.

FGIT: The end state you envision in NNE 2016 - when do you think the Navy might accomplish that?

Carey: While I would love it in 2016, I realize that the size of our enterprise is so big that I think each year we're going to be - and we're working on this right now -defining the milestones of what are considered to be success factors. What things to we want to see happening in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016? And, are you ever at an end state, are you done? We will always be in this state of movement, although under a very controlled circumstance. We will never ever be at what I would call "ultimate steady state."

In essence, one third of our enterprise will always be under tech refresh, for the most part. Industry is doing that every three to four years, anyway. The idea is to keep the upper and lower control limit of the enterprise closer together, while moving it forward with [commercial-off-the-shelf] technologies to allow us to be more efficient and effective.

There's no plateau. There's no 2016 "we're there, by god!" There will always be "where do we want to be" and we will keep our planning horizon sufficiently in the future to decide how much leading edge, do we want to try to jump on.

FGIT: You've talked about acquisition reform within the context of NNE 2016. What's the connection?

Carey: The connection is that we know - and there's no new news here - that the acquisition process as defined in law and regulations, the DoD 5000, allows for a great deal of latitude and innovation. However, the processes that we use are not keeping pace with the advantages presented by technology.

So, how do I sync those two up? That goes back to the ability to make decisions to align the budget process with [the lifecycle] of technology. I need to be able to move smartly through acquisition, and there's nothing that prevents us from doing that today. But, similarly, the requirement process called JCIDS [Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System] takes you down a very deliberate path, which is inconsistent with purchasing COTS to perform a mainstream mission. So how do we homogenize those things? There are many, many people working on that as I talk to you now, even.

What we're trying to realize in NNE is some of those are features which allow us to take advantage of a Gen-X process or a Gen-Y smart phone. If it really solves a problem that we have, how do I make the decision, commit the funds and buy it inside the execution year, the fiscal year that I'm in? Today, when we want to do something enterpisewide and of a fairly large dollar value, we POM [Program Objectives Memorandum] for it. POMs are really a request to spend money in the future. By the time you get to spend that money, that thing you wanted is old. Or it's not leading edge or bleeding edge, it's just there.

So we need to sync up those things a little better, while making sure that we're not doing risky things. I don't claim to have the answer, but I claim to make the case that if we want to be a more agile enterprise in the warfighting arena, we will have to be able to take advantage of COTS on a more timely basis today, and that will require a different budgeting strategy to do that.

FGIT: Does the 5000 series need to be modified by Congress?

Carey: Well, Congress doesn't own the 5000, we do, DoD does. I think people are looking at that - that's not my realm, per se. You have to look at what can you do within the present law construct, whether it's Title 10 or Title 40, and then decide, given what you want to do, whether we have to go back and ask the Congress to change the law.

We can move fast, if we want to. But our system is built around the industrial age. It's built around buying ships and aircraft and weapons that take a long, long time to produce, just because they do. It's not built around the information age and its associated processes and moving at network speed.

We're trying to close that gap.

FGIT: So what's your greatest lost opportunity, something you wish you could have accomplished, but did not, or could not?

Carey: I don't really have one. I know you're waiting for the bell-ringer answer there...

FGIT: (laughs)

Carey: Given that things in this organization move slowly, there's a lot of alignment required, there's a lot of collaboration and cooperation required, and moving the ball downfield is what I think we got done. We delivered a lot of ability to innovate. We delivered a great deal of security to our network infrastructure while affording better access. I think I helped a little bit with Web 2.0 and with blogging and things like that, illustrating that it's okay. I think we helped with open source, saying it was okay to use that. There are many things that are in the air right now. Did I expect that to be done by today when I started it four or five months ago? Not really. Everything is on a continuum.

I don't think I have any big rock item that I just didn't get done. The staff has got everything that I've got in my mind on their plates, so they're being worked.

FGIT: How would you characterize Navy adoption of service oriented architecture?

Carey: I would say that we're moving - I'll use that really squishy term called "deliberately." We have adopted the concept. We're having it blossom in CANES [Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services], which is our first opportunity to build a modular network architecture of shipboard purposes that allow us to make use of the SOA construct, afloat, and use it on the associated applications and functionality.

SOA is a wonderful construct that you really have to understand your business processes, your applications - and there's some real work that has to be done. It's not presto-chango, we're there.

We hope to spread it out across the Navy and the Marine Corps in a  very deliberate manner.

FGIT: What's the next step after CANES?

Carey: My hope is that we roll out NGEN, we roll out NNE, and now I've basically put a stake in the ground for the mid-term and far-term. In the time in between, I hope to align the network architectures of ONE-NET, which is our garrison, OCONUS networks, some of the Marine Corp enterprise networks, and then the afloat networks - IT-21 sliding into CANES - and then having them all becomes components of the NNE.

Overtime, I'm looking to homogenize all the major network architectures into a more consistent set of standards that will allow me to traverse it, or them, with my identity found in my common access card, so that no matter where I plug in, I can get to my information around the globe, at least in a DON network, and then if the DoD comes around, then I would say the GIG [Global Information Grid] as well.

FGIT: SOA works best when there's a common framework that's adopted as widely possible.

Carey: That's correct.

FGIT: So, does that mean that the Navy will adopt the SOA framework that CANES is adopting?

Carey: We'll build off that into what will turn out to be the NNE framework. SOA is a mainstream component of CANES right now. Is it going to be the exact same construct in five years? I would venture to say I doubt it. It will grow from what we know now to what we have as the standard, as we start to knit together the fabric of our network environment, move from a loosely stitched quilt, to a nice consistent blanket, if you will.

FGIT: Will the Navy ever get to the point where the SOA components could be put together during run time?

Carey: I've been to a couple places where they've demonstrated that. So I don't want to say no, but I would have to tell you that we've got a lot of work between now and when we get to that type of environment. Could I do that on a small scale? I think the answer is yes. Could I do it across the department? At that scale, I don't know yet. I think it's a good goal for us.

FGIT: What's your next job?

Carey: I'm going to go work with [Vice Admiral] Barry McCullough [commander of U.S. Fleet Cyber Command/Commander, U.S. 10th Fleet] and do strategy and policy for him, and I'm looking forward to helping the operational side of cyberspace grow and help balance network operations, information access, with proper levels of security.

The same things that I'm working on here, I will be pushing the same, hopefully right things, there.

FGIT: What's your advice for the next DON CIO?

Carey: This is simple. IT is a team sport. The minute you try to throw the ball to yourself, if you will, you're not going to do very well. There are many people that are required to make this go, and you've got to collaborate and cooperate with all of them, to be successful.

FGIT: Is it fair to say that the DON CIO has influence but not power?

Carey: I would say I have a little bit of both. The law does not establish the CIO as the cyber czar or the place where the buck stops anywhere. The only example of that I have is Roger Baker over at Veterans Affairs. He owns all the dollars, all the people and all the stuff, the architecture and the applications and the infrastructure. Absent that, we are all at varying degrees of control and influence - and power. That's why I say that being the CIO is very much a team sport, IT as a whole is a team sport. It is very much dependent on others, and the minute you decide to go it alone, you will find that you probably want to change your course.

For more:
- apply online for the job of DON CIO

Related Articles:
Carey: Navy IT acquisition needs to get quicker
DoD program managers wary of cloud computing