Navy intranet chief to retire later this year
Rear Adm. James Godwin helped oversee the extension of the NMCI contract with Texas-based contractor EDS.
After nearly two years of directing the Navy Marine Corps Intranet program, Rear Adm. James Godwin will retire this fall, having granted a contract extension for the multibillion-dollar computer network.
The announcement of Godwin's successor is expected shortly.
In March, Godwin helped guide the decision to grant a three-year, $3.1 billion extension to the Navy's contract with Electronic Data Systems, allowing the company to continue building the servicewide computer system and solidifying the company's relationship with the Navy.
Godwin was the program's first program executive officer for enterprise information systems, a position created to provide executive leadership for the program and report directly to Delores Etter, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition. Navy Enterprise Resource Planning, a program for supporting applications that manage product planning, inventories and other business functions; ONENet, a secure IT infrastructure; and other programs, also fell under his authority in that position.
According to a Navy spokesman, Godwin was hoping to retire last year after a 30-plus-year career in the Navy, but Etter talked him into staying on to manage the transition to the new management structure.
Godwin took command of NMCI in September 2004 amid controversies and delays in the implementation of the program. The outgoing NMCI director at the time, Rear Adm. Charles Munns, acknowledged that the program had troubles, but said it had passed a "tipping point" and was improving rapidly.
But quarterly surveys measuring the NMCI user satisfaction do not show any significant recent improvement. In fact, they show a decline from levels that, at the time of Godwin's appointment, were approaching a point allowing the program's contractor EDS to receive incentive payments.
In response to a survey for the first quarter of 2006 conducted by NMCI's program office, 74 percent of users said they were satisfied, which was unchanged from the last quarter of 2005 but was a drop from the 78 percent satisfaction level reported in the second and third quarters of 2005.
In the survey from the first quarter of 2006, the only Navy command to achieve the 85 percent satisfaction level required for EDS to receive incentive payments was the Commander, Naval Installations Command.