Auction tactics cast buying ethics in hazy light
Few things are more enjoyable than a good auction. The atmosphere of competition, the sing-song of an experienced auctioneer, the chance to pick up a bargain, even the ability to drop out of a competition unexpectedly—they all appeal to me. But now, auctions of a different sort are turning up with increasing frequency in federal contracting. And I find those auctions to be troubling.
As GSA begins evaluating pair of ACES bids, Commerce agency sets deal for PKIservices
The Commerce Department's National Technical Information Service has formed a partnership with Electronic Data Systems Corp. to provide public-key infrastructure services to federal, state and local government organizations. The move comes as at least two contractors have bid on the General Services Administration's governmentwide digital certificate service contract. The partnership between NTIS and EDS has been in the works for a year and was driven by requests from NTIS customers, said Chris Louden, director of NTIS' FedWorld.
Enterprise Vault organizes e-mail for retrieval
Compaq Computer Corp.'s Enterprise Vault repository weeds out aging Microsoft Outlook e-mails and archives them for Web-style search and retrieval via the AltaVista search engine. Enterprise Vault is part of Compaq's Enterprise Suite for Microsoft Exchange Server. The suite securely manages mail, documents, workflow and approvals, all from within the user's Outlook interface.
Army puts a premium on retaining its IT staff
NORFOLK, Va.—The Army wants its systems to be all they can be—and that means having good information technology specialists. As network security worries grow, Army officials said they are mulling ways to attract and retain more systems workers. "IT professionals are getting the most attention" of the vast array of military occupation specialties, said Col. Michael Lemons, director of the Army Computer Science School at Fort Gordon, Ga. He spoke last week at the Army Small Computer
Feds have a controlling interest
Keeping intruders out of your systems is enough of a headache without adding a firewall that's difficult to configure and manage. Hence, this admonition from a Transportation Department user in Seattle on FireWall-1 from CheckPoint Software Technologies Inc. of Redwood City, Calif., the top-rated firewall in the GCN survey: "Think of the user who has to manage—not technicians."
Upgrades equip products to handle fully redundant copper-to-fiber conversions
Transition Networks Inc. designs products that mediate between copper and fiber cabling on mixed networks. The Minneapolis company has upgraded its existing Conversion Center with a fully redundant copper-to-fiber converter for Fast Ethernet, a T1/E1 copper-to-fiber converter and a better management module. Transition Networks president and chief executive officer C.S. Mondelli said 85 percent of the company's business comes from fiber upgrades to existing networks, but new networks often cannot afford all-fiber cabling, either.
Lab Notes
Mouse and Gates. At Spring Comdex in Chicago this year, Microsoft Corp. chairman Bill Gates demonstrated Microsoft Windows 2000 without a repeat of last year's embarrassing crashes by Windows 98. The third beta version of Win 2000 will be out soon, and Microsoft still predicts an official launch at year's end.
SPAWAR goes through channels to buy 3,000 PCs
In one of the largest federal channel assembly buys to date, the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command has ordered 3,000 Hewlett-Packard Co. PCs, at a price of $6 million, to be assembled at a Frederick, Md., facility by GE Capital IT Solutions Federal Systems . Under SPAWAR's consolidated Program Directorate 15, four program offices in the Global Information and Network Systems Directorate placed the order early this year.
Working day and night, FBI finishes IAFIS code
That's when they will start processing digital fingerprints, using more than four dozen Hewlett-Packard Convex Scalable Parallel Processor 2000 and HP 9000 K-Class servers in a secure computer room the size of two football fields. In the final building phase, the $640 million Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System is scheduled to come online this summer at 90 percent of its final functionality.
Multimedia projectors show their stuff
The GCN Lab put four of the brightest and lightest units through their paces. One test consisted of showing to several audiences the Apple QuickTime video trailer of the movie "Star Wars: Episode I, The Phantom Menace." The high-quality video file revealed the light sides as well as the dark sides of the four test units.
Briefing Book
What's the score? The Army has released the beta software for its Force XXI Battle Command Brigade and Below program. The FBCB2 Version 3.1 software includes functions the service deemed crucial after it tested earlier versions during warfighting experiments and limited user tests. The latest additions include an advanced joint services messaging application, a real-time battlefield monitoring tool and a graphical app that will let commanders detail combat objectives and plans for other FBCB2 users.
Strengthen security by putting CPUs on lockdown
The Austin, Texas, company's Remote Desktop product multiplexes the keyboard, mouse and monitor signals as far as 1,300 feet over Category 3 or 5 unshielded twisted-pair cable. Several CPUs can be co-located with minimal impact on the users, according to the company. The Postal Service is testing Remote Desktop at its processing and distribution facility in Buffalo, N.Y., to keep PCs off the main floor of a truck terminal.
Langston plans $1b IT initiative
DOD maintains a Cold War-era management structure that is resistant to change, lacks reliable databases and has failed to build an information technology infrastructure to support systems it needs, said Paul Brubaker, principal director in the office of CIO Marvin Langston. He spoke last week at the Air Force's Software Technology Conference.
WinFax Pro is still best fax software
Real-life requirements: WinFax Pro is still the Lexus of PC fax software in spite of Microsoft Windows 95's inferior fax bundle, which has to be installed manually under Windows 98, by the way. Users who send faxes frequently need and appreciate the features in WinFax Pro, now up to Version 9.0. Installation is as easy as it gets.
BREAKING NEWS
SALT LAKE CITY—Dolores Etter, deputy undersecretary of Defense for science and technology, has taken on a new job: executive agent for software acquisition at the Defense Department. At the annual Software Technology Conference last week, Etter said half of DOD software projects end up costing twice their estimates, and the average schedule slippage is three years. The department spends up to $10,000 per software function point on military systems vs. $100 for typical desktop PC applications,
HP's portable CD-sized scanner can edit, e-mail or fax document afterit's captured
The $699 Hewlett-Packard CapShare 910 mobile 12.5-ounce scanner runs Microsoft Windows CE 2.0 and can capture a page in about six seconds. The CapShare stores up to 50 monochrome, letter-sized page images in Adobe Portable Document Format or Tagged Image File Format. Users view the pages on the unit's LCD monitor and transport them to a PC or printer through a standard serial port or infrared port. Once captured, a document can be edited, e-mailed or
USDA nears completion of comm phase of its service upgrades
The Agriculture Department next month will complete its $130 million LAN and WAN Voice project—the first component of the $3 billion Service Center Initiative, USDA officials said. LAN and WAN Voice provides a common telecommunications infrastructure for approximately 2,500 consolidated USDA service centers across the country. The infrastructure consists of new cabling, routing and switching equipment, telephones and private branch exchanges, and Internet access software for PCs, said Rich Roberts,
Don't jump ship now
Here's a picture that would please cynics and connoisseurs of cruel irony: In one corner, agency information technology managers are deciding who is going to be at work on Saturday, Jan. 1, when everyone else will be savoring a particularly momentous new year; elsewhere, Congress mulls a drastic cut in last-minute emergency funds for 2000 fix-it projects.
Weather research group stretches computer power
Without paying any direct costs, the National Center for Atmospheric Research has expanded its computing power tenfold through a loan agreement with a Compaq Computer Corp. reseller. Late last year, NCAR's weather research group in Boulder, Colo., borrowed 42 Digital Equipment Corp. 600-MHz Alpha workstations, seven multiprocessor Digital AlphaServers and two Compaq StorageWorks RAID Array 7000 units, worth $8.7 million. The equipment was loaned by iMSC Corp. of Colorado Springs, Colo.
App finds holes in IP network security
Box Score B Security Analyzer Enterprise Edition WebTrends Corp., Portland, Ore.; tel. 888-932-8736 http://www.webtrends.com Price: $4,499 for Enterprise Edition, $1,999 for Professional Edition, $11,999 for Traveling License Edition Pros and cons: + Excellent auditing and automatic security updates + Concise, customizable reports – Other tools needed to implement fixes
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