They figured out a long time ago that it was more efficient and gave better quality results to have one Government Printing Office than ten thousand printing offices - the same logic applies to IT. IT can be both commoditized and customized by qualified individuals - if the Navy needs something special, then the Government IT Office should have to acquire skills to meet the Navy's needs. Intelligence already has specialized IT systems, to handle classification transitions - hire those guys away to the GITO. The Navy should be building ships, not data centers - more Waste, Fraud, and Abuse.
One of the challenges we face is, in fact, internal IT systems and the power silos' automatic turn towards secrecy whenever oversight is required. See: IRS backups, State Dept. emails, SEC authentication, NSA everything, etc. The GAO could have their statutory power if the IT were centralized, which is why it isn't. Where's Rand Paul on this? Filibustering must be good for popularity, but it's not striking at the root.
MAYBE this is the best use of re-tasking the NSA's existing bureaucracy, if killing it outright isn't feasible. Though why would the Navy trust them after how they've behaved? But we don't need a General in charge of the Printing Office, so the IT Office may become trustworthy if it devolves to civilian with strong oversight.
