CHIEF OF INFORMATION SENIOR ENLISTED LEADER

1200 NAVY PENTAGON ROOM 4B463 WASHINGTON, DC 20350-1200

All,

Greetings to everyone. With so much going on in the Navy and within our community, I wanted to send you all an

update.

The Budget and Sequester Big Picture

This year has been filled with a lot of uncertainty on how the sequester and the military budget are going to effect

the Navy. The Navy released its Fiscal Year 2014 budget plan to Congress earlier this month and the focus was on

people, platforms, power and partnerships. The budget request doesn’t change the course our Navy’s been on but

it does adapt to new budget constraints.

I think one of the benefits of being a sea-going service is it’s natural for us to adapt to changing tides or currents

while still achieving our mission. This is what your Navy leadership is doing now with the current budget

constraints. Keep reading www.navy.mil, All Hands Magazine and the NavyLive Blog for the latest.

So what does this all mean to our MC community?

We need to keep up on the latest budget news and identify ways we can help Sailors, Navy civilians and their

families understand how any changes could affect them. It is our obligation to inform and explain how budget

decisions are being made, what Navy leadership priorities are and what those priorities mean for the future.

We also need to continue to tell and share the Navy story. We should be finding stories that illustrate, provide

context and support the CNO’s tenants of Warfighting First, Operate Forward and Be Ready. In times where

budgets get tighter, it’s important to be able to show and explain the Navy’s role and contributions to National

Security. If you haven’t read the CNO’s Sailing Directions, Navigation Plan, or the CNO Blog, I’d encourage each of

you to take a look and see how your unit is carrying out or supporting the Navy’s mission and CNO’s vision. Stories

that illustrate those concepts are valuable to us and we’re looking for you to tell them.

The Sequester/Budget and Manning

I’ve been asked by some Sailors if the budget or sequester will impact the MC community. The budget uncertainty

doesn’t affect our rating end-strength. No one is talking about our community taking any personnel cuts. In fact,

no one is talking about the Navy taking personnel cuts; instead, the Navy is asking to grow some 900 Sailors over

the next couple of years.

The sequester could result in furloughs, which will affect our DoN and DoD civilians - a vital part of our team.

Furloughs mean our civilian counterparts could lose a set number of work days and pay. This is still a moving plan –

but it could affect your mission. If furloughs happen, look for ways to support your command and be mindful that

these furloughs can make things financially tight for our civilian counterparts.

We’re already seeing how the furlough may affect our schools at Defense Information School. DINFOS has a plan to

reduce some courses if the furloughs happen. If you’re scheduling ‘C’ Schools or are scheduled to attend a ‘C’

School, check with the Detailer, [denise.m.davis@navy.mil / (901) 874-3689], Lt. Cmdr. Steve Thompson at CHINFO

[steven.thompson@navy.mil / (703) 695-1888] or on the DINFOS Course Listings page at www.chinfo.navy.mil.

Scheduled October Basic MC Course not being conducted

DINFOS will not be conducting the first iteration of the Basic MC Course starting in October. The first Basic MC

Course of FY14 will instead be offered in December. This means we will only have six iterations of the Basic MC

Course vice the normal seven. The October course is not being conducted due to Navy instructor manning

shortfalls and the scope of work required to rewrite, retrain and qualify instructors on a new Basic MC Course.

The new Basic MC Course has been in the works for more than a year and will eliminate redundancies found in the current course. It will put cameras in students' hands earlier and the cameras will remain with the students longer. The new course will also weave the various functional areas throughout the course to help students keep their skills sharp in all the areas, with added emphasis on maintaining writing proficiency throughout. I’m personally very excited about the changes in our MC course. Our talented DINFOS instructors are writing the lesson plans now, and from discussions I’ve had with them, this is going to make an already strong course even stronger. New Writing Style to be taught at DINFOS, NPASE

In addition to the MC ‘A’ School changes talked about above, the instructors are revamping the writing portion of

the course so our MCs will write news the way the rest of the industry writes news. Hard news and press releases

will be expected to be written using the inverted pyramid style and other news stories will be expected to be

written using what’s called the Wall Street Journal style or Kabob style of writing. This writing style will help our

MCs organize their stories to provide better context and a format that lends itself to telling more compelling

stories.

I’ve also asked the Navy Public Affairs Support Element to update their Writing Course to align with what we’ll be

teaching at DINFOS. We’re also working closely with CHINFO’s Navy Media Content Services (OI-2) and the Defense

Media Activity to align our expectations at Navy.mil and All Hands Magazine to this way of telling Navy stories.

Manning and Advancements

The MC rating is currently slightly overmanned. This means we’re not accepting any conversions into the

community right now. Additionally, the detailers are experiencing a shortage of billets for E5 shore duty and E4/E3

sea and shore billets. An internal rating review has been ordered and should prompt the opening of more billets in

the coming months. Please be patient as MCC Davis and MCCS Smithyman work through this issue. Ensure your

career counselors and senior leadership are communicating with the detailers about Sailors waiting for orders.

We created a new MCCM billet at NPASE West. This billet provides an MC Master Chief billet on the West Coast

and helps stabilize advancement opportunity in the community. With the creation of the new billet, Master Chief

Houlihan’s selection into the CMC program and a couple of upcoming MCCM retirements, our MC Master Chief

community will become properly manned at 100% this summer vice the 175% manning it’s previously been.

What does this mean to you? The Navy is selecting a new MC Master Chief this year. Advancements this year and

next should be stable – maybe not as high as last year – but stable. In the Navy, we promote to vacancies and I

expect our MCCS advancement quotas to be good, which means our MCC quotas should be good as well. Good

advancements at the CPO level mean fairly consistent opportunities at the E4 to E6 level.

NPASE Receives New Live TV Van

NPASE East now has a live satellite television van. This is an industry-standard, high-definition TV live van and I’m

excited to hear what the MCs in the Norfolk area think of it after they learn how to use it and have a couple of

events under their belts.

The live truck will be able to schedule and conduct live broadcast interviews between Sailors on the waterfront

and their hometowns on live news programs. These types of broadcasts could significantly enhance our outreach

to parts of America that don’t have an opportunity to see the Navy.

Once live truck training and operational tests are completed, I expect there be an increased importance placed on

live news hits in towns where we had to cancel previously-scheduled Navy Weeks, Fleet Weeks and 50/50 visits.

With limitations on travel due to the budget constraints, we still need to offer and provide a way to explain our

Navy to hometown America and the live truck will help us do that.

New Detailers Selected

Congratulations to MCCS Tom Jones for his selection to become our new Senior MC Detailer. He’ll be reporting

aboard this summer and will initially take over for MCC Denise Davis as the E5 and below MC Detailer. Later this

year, MCC Jennifer Villalovos will arrive at Millington and will take over as the E5 and below detailer and MCCS

Jones will become the E6 and above detailer. We’ve been fortunate to have such a great team with Senior

Smithyman and Chief Davis at the helm in our detailing shop and I know Senior Jones and Chief Villalovos will

continue to provide superior support to our community as they take over duties there.

An incredible time to be an MC

This is an incredible time to be in our community. As Navy programs and policies change, it’s our role to inform,

educate and help explain it to our shipmates and families. Our role is even more vital now in these complex times.

Please feel free to email me at jon.mcmillan@navy.mil with your thoughts, questions or concerns. Keep up the

great work.

Vr/ Master Chief

MCCM(SW/AW/EXW) Jon McMillan

Senior Enlisted Leader, Navy Chief of Information