Navy, Marine Corps Collaboration Is Focus of Chapter Breakfast

Leaders within the Navy and the Marine Corps had an engaging discussion on collaboration and future information technology initiatives at a chapter breakfast in October at the Crystal Gateway Marriott. The Navy's deputy chief information officer, Janice Haith, said the service's long-term objective is to migrate at least 75 percent of its data from government-controlled data centers to commercially operated cloud platforms. Haith also said the Navy plans to use the Next Generation Enterprise Network (NGEN) contract to merge its existing cybersecurity infrastructure into the Defense Department's Joint Regional Security Stacks (JRSS). Unlike the Navy, the Marine Corps already owns and operates its entire network and mostly uses the NGEN contract for supplemental labor. Ken Bible, the Marine Corps' deputy chief information officer, said: “We've started to realize that there are some things we could do more like the Navy did in terms of using contractor services to support the [Marine Corps Enterprise Network.] We haven't fully fleshed that out, and we're still discussing what those potential leveraging points would be, but we are not changing from the government-owned, government-operated construct we have now.” The chapter's breakfast series draws senior officers and professionals from across the Defense Department, armed services, intelligence and civilian agencies to discuss topics of interest to the government community, ranging from networks to mobility to cybersecurity to unmanned aircraft systems and sensors. Bible and Haith were joined by Rear Adm. Nancy Norton, USN, director of warfare integration for information dominance, and Col. Scott Stebbins, chief, C-4 Strategic Planning Division, C-4 Directorate, U.S. Marine Corps.

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