Description
Organization: DoN-Chief Information Office
Team Name: Department of the Navy Enterprise Licensing Team
Related Acquisition Topic(s): Acquisition Practices Streamlining, Commercial Practices, Commercial and Non Developmental Items (CANDI), Financial Management, Open Systems, Partnering, Price Based Acquisition
Description:
The Department of the Navy Enterprise Licensing Team (Team) is a critical component of the Department of the Navy and Department of Defense Enterprise Software Initiative (ESI). The Team coordinates multi-claimant IT investments for the DoN and provides DoN requirements to the DoD ESI. The ESI is a joint DoD project to leverage the vast buying power of the DoD for commercial software products. By consolidating software requirements and negotiating Enterprise Agreements with software vendors, both the DoN Enterprise Licensing Team and the DoD ESI realize significant Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) savings in software acquisition and maintenance. Lead Services have been assigned for each Enterprise Software area. The Department of the Navy Chief Information Officer (DoN CIO) serves as executive agent for office automation enterprise software. The Department of the Navy Enterprise Licensing Team fully supports the DoD ESI goal to develop and implement a DoD Enterprise Process to identify, acquire, distribute, and manage Enterprise Licensing.
The Department of the Navy Enterprise Licensing Team has successfully collaborated within the DoN and across the DoD to establish Enterprise Agreements. The Team focused on the fundamental problem with procuring software for the DoD: Software price and expense of acquisition, distribution, training, maintenance, and support costs too much. The Team displayed exceptional ability to operate across organizational lines and include the private sector in developing innovative solutions to multifaceted acquisition problems.
The Team proved the concept that aggregating orders for office automation software can realize significant savings. The Team negotiated an Enterprise Agreement for Visio graphics products that achieved savings of 50% over the GSA price. Other Enterprise Agreements were established with Beyond.com for Corel desktop products that realized savings up to 69% over FSS prices, and with Novell that realized a 42%-50% savings for Netware resulting in an approximate savings of $878 thousand over the life of the Agreement. Finally, the Team used a seat management approach, an industry best practice, to negotiate a DoN-wide 300,000-seat Agreement with Microsoft. The total projected savings across the Department of the Navy for this Agreement is $79.2 million, or $264 per seat, based on a Navy systems command's actual experience. Additional future cost savings are anticipated through better license management afforded by these Agreements. By focusing on reducing TCO and improving interoperability the potential for saving more money in the short term is improved. Through its efforts, the Team has also achieved significant savings and enables expanded access to the premier IT research and advisory service companies (GartnerGroup, Giga Information Group, and International Data Corporation). These services facilitate adoption of industry best practices and have resulted in millions of dollars of savings and cost avoidance for DoN organizations.
The Team successfully negotiated office automation enterprise licensing agreements to better integrate Defense and Commercial business processes and ensured that all Enterprise Agreements were open for use by Defense Contractors. In this way, the DoD shares in the savings of reduced cost of software acquisition. In addition, the Team included requirements in Enterprise Agreements to ensure products are compliant with the Defense Joint Technical Architecture (JTA) and the DoN IT Standards Guide thereby promoting interoperability. Other commercial best practices were identified and adopted by the Team. These included identifying high payback targets and assigning responsibility for negotiating Enterprise Agreements only to offices with demonstrated specialized knowledge and expertise. Both the process and end products are designed for flexibility, and are suited to peacekeeping and other emerging DoD missions. The Enterprise Agreement model, itself, was carefully constructed to better allocate and manage risk between the parties. As an innovative risk management tool, the Enterprise Agreement protects the Government's interest while reducing TCO and improving performance and schedule. The end result is a shorter acquisition lead-time to meet the Warfighter's needs faster, better and cheaper.
The Team also worked to improve the software acquisition system with a focus on better use of the shrinking number of Acquisition Corps professionals at central buying activities. Front-line procurement and industry personnel were consulted to identify best contracting methods to use. Selected customer groups were surveyed to ensure that the methodology was responsive to their needs. Finally, a system was developed to ensure the results and "lessons learned" from each Enterprise Agreement negotiation were captured in the ESI database. Leading edge Internet technology has been employed by the Team to implement improved business processes. Enterprise Agreement products are "stocked" and available for ordering online through various information technology stores of the DoD Electronic Mall (EMALL). The DoN CIO is the DoD's Executive Agent for development of the IT Corridor of the DoD EMALL. In addition to providing ready availability, the EMALL provides ease of use through "point and click" comparison-shopping. Enterprise Agreements for office automation products are also announced in appropriate marketing brochures, trade publications, and at technology symposia as part of a marketing program developed by the Team.
The Team has established an extensive system to ensure that the Department of the Navy Enterprise Licensing process remains viable and satisfies the needs of the Defense customer. Enterprise Licensing has been integrated into the Navy's IT Investment Policy. Information technology vendors are now included in the DoD EMALL Vendor's Conference. This conference provides a forum for exchange of a wide range of information related to electronic commerce, permits resolution of issues, and facilitates the critical teaming process between government and industry. Other functions, such as configuration management and help desk support, are being integrated into the DoD EMALL to better focus management efforts and reduce costs. The Team incorporates leading edge Web technology in its business process to facilitate improved coordination and information exchange among Team members. Finally, the Team regularly reviews the status of Enterprise Agreements for potential improvement, additional consolidation, and expansion of customer base.
The Department of the Navy Enterprise Licensing Team continues to improve on a process that has significant, positive impact across the DoD. By leveraging the buying power of the Defense customer, the Department realizes significant savings in TCO, ensures IT investments comply with DoD-wide standards, architectures, policies and procedures, and enables ordering and tracking of licenses through a common, DoD-wide coordinated process.
