THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, August 27, 1996 TAG: 9608270261
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 84 lines
In today's Navy, laptop-toting officers abound. Some simply hate to be separated from their traveling computers.
But in his 35-year Navy career, Jimmy Pappas never carried one. As commander of the Norfolk Naval complex for two years in the late 1980s, he didn't even have a PC on his desk.
Networked? ``The only network I had direct access to was an intercom,'' he says.
It's ironic, then, that the retired three-star admiral's pet project these days is a computer system - and not just any computer system. Drawing from his own experience, Pappas is working to develop a system that he says will help commanders of military installations better manage their operations.
Pappas is the executive consultant in a new four-person office opened this month in Dominion Tower by Intergraph Corp.
Though it's been five years since he left the Navy, you can't take the sea out of a sailor. That's clear when Pappas identifies his current employer as being ``homeported'' in Huntsville, Ala.
But the very pervasiveness of the military in the way Pappas thinks, acts and talks is just fine with Intergraph. Company executives hope the retired vice admiral's insights, experience and contacts will help them win a larger stake of the Defense Department's spending on the interactive computer-graphics systems that are Intergraph's specialty.
Pappas, 63, came on board with Intergraph about a year ago and has gradually been working toward a full-time consulting role. The job is his second since his Navy retirement. He'd served from 1991 to 1994 as president of the Arlington-based Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society, a worldwide emergency-relief organization.
In his current job, he doesn't supervise anyone and doesn't even have a secretary. He answers his own phone. No one carries his briefcase.
But Pappas bubbles with enthusiasm in describing his work and his hopes for improving the base commander's lot.
He credits senior leadership at the Norfolk naval complex for initiating the project a couple years ago. Intergraph - whose local customers range from the Norfolk Naval Shipyard to NASA-Langley - was chosen to help develop an initial emergency-dispatch module for the computer system. Now the company hopes to build on that selection to develop modules covering the entire range of base operations - not just for Norfolk-area bases but other military installations as well.
``What we're developing will give base commanders at their desks management tools and information about every area of base operations - which is something they don't have now,'' Pappas said.
John Simon, executive director at the Norfolk Naval Base, said the concept behind Shore Information Management System is to link together ``islands of information'' on everything from roads to phone systems to ship departures and arrivals in an easy-to-use, readily accessible form.
He says the concept originated under Rear Adm. Byron E. ``Jake'' Tobin, commander of the Norfolk naval complex in the early '90s after a fire spotlighted shortcomings in its information-management system. Emergency response to the fire was unacceptably slow, he says, which set senior Navy leaders locally on a far-reaching exploration of the installation's information-technology infrastructure.
The effort has continued to be fleshed out under Tobin's successors, Rear Adm. Paul D. Moses, now retired, and Rear Adm. Robert S. Cole, the current commander of the Norfolk naval complex.
Each new leader has had increasingly more computer tools than Pappas, when he was area base commander. COs have desktop computers that they can use to get quick access to some information. Cole carries a laptop.
Yet there's a lot of information that still isn't easy to retrieve or, when delivered, doesn't arrive in the handiest form, Pappas says.
The Shore Information Management System will address those problems, he says. It will be Windows NT-based and built largely around ``intelligent mapping.'' A base commander could, by navigating through a series of maps, home in on a particular building - even go inside it for floor plans, usage data and other information. Or he could take a big-picture, up-to-the-minute view, for instance, of where all the ships and subs in and around a naval base are located.
Price for all of this? Intergraph isn't saying yet.
But Pappas is optimistic about the company's chances for success. ``I spent 13 of my years in the naval shore establishment and I experienced all the frustrations that I know are experienced by the guys today,'' he says. ``This system is going to make everyone more productive.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
Jimmy Pappas by CNB