Editorial: NMCI needs oversight

Editorial: NMCI needs oversight

The Navy-Marine Corps Intranet is the government’s biggest gamble yet on privatization. Worth more than $900 million per year to contractor Electronic Data Systems, the Texas computer services firm founded by H. Ross Perot, NMCI provides computer services for more than 660,000 military and civilian workers.

Seven years after its start, NMCI has yet to earn accolades from its users. Indeed, it’s safe to say the program is hated by thousands.

The problems are so legendary that the acronym has devolved into a verb among users, one that means to crash and fail.

So it’s surprising, if not downright shocking, when news comes out that a new survey appears to show that 83.8 percent of users are satisfied with the service they get from NMCI.

Surprising, that is, until one looks into the details.

First, there is the matter of numbers. Of the 189,000 users selected for the survey, only 15,000 responded, so the answers represent only 8 percent of those queried and less than 3 percent of the user pool. It is not clear what method EDS used to select the 189,000 users, so it is hard to tell whether the responses represent a statistically accurate picture of the user base.


Rest of article at: http://www.navytimes.com/community/opinion/navy_editorial_nmci_071210/