Route Fifty

Agencies can touch base when evaluating designs

A British-developed knowledge base will become a subscription CD-ROM and Web service for agencies that need help in evaluating conceptual engineering design proposals. The knowledge base, developed by Engineering Sciences Data Unit (ESDU) of London, contains data, equations, charts, graphs and Fortran computer programs of interest to aerospace, mechanical, process and structural engineers.

By Florence Olsen, GCN
May 10, 1999

Phaser 740's easy setup earns points with sysadmins

Some of Tektronix's earlier entries had their minor components packed inside a bag in a box inside another box. The Phaser 560 gave some hints that the unwieldy setup process was being streamlined. And in fact, all the Phaser 740's components came inside one huge, nicely packed box and went together fairly quickly.

By Michael Cheek, GCN
May 10, 1999

FTS 2001 vendors meet with federal users

KANSAS CITY, Mo.Against a Star Wars-esque background of flashing lights, FTS 2001 contractors Sprint Corp. and MCI WorldCom Inc. last week pitched their competing high-bandwidth network services at the annual Federal Technology Service users conference. Both vendors will have to wait until they are allowed to enter local telephone markets before they can offer full end-to-end voice and data services.

By William Jackson, GCN
May 10, 1999

Experts: A good data warehouse improves decision-making

What steps are critical for data warehousing success? DENVERA well-managed data warehouse can dramatically improve an organization's decision-making capabilities, several experts said during a recent panel discussion. A data warehouse is one of the most effective ways for information technology to add value, said Kimberly Baker, vice president and general manager for data warehouse systems at NCR Corp. of Dayton, Ohio. But

By Christopher J. Dorobek, GCN
May 10, 1999

Keydata builds secure hard drives into its latest 300-MHz portables

The Keynote 7700 notebook PC takes several paths to security. Its KeySecurity IDE hard drive works only in a particular machine, unless altered by the manufacturer. The unit has ROM bootup security, hardware-generated 32-bit encrypted passwords and two Kensington Lock slots from Kensington Technology Group of San Mateo, Calif. The $2,695 notebook features a 300-MHz Pentium II processor, 64M of synchronous dynamic RAM expandable to 192M, a 4.3G removable hard drive upgradeable to 10G and a 13.3-inch

By Bill Murray, GCN
May 10, 1999

Tax agency plans a well-earned upgrade for form imaging system

The IRS this summer will begin upgrading the Service Center Recognition Image Processing System, its imaging workhorse. "I feel good about the upgrade," said Judy L. Thomas, SCRIPS program manager. "It was not a Y2K decision; it was a business decision." The IRS in January 1995 went online with the $88 million SCRIPS at five of its 10 service centers. The system uses optical character recognition and image processing to collect and store tax data from some

By Frank Tiboni, GCN
May 10, 1999

CIOs travel a risky path toward IT architecture

The goal of a governmentwide architecture for information technology is a lofty one. But the reality is elusive. The Chief Information Officers Council has made a laudable first few steps toward open systems along a path full of traps and blind alleys. For more than a decade, the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers have sponsored a similar effort called the Open

By GCN
May 10, 1999

AutoCAD 2000 makes up for slow file loading with user-friendliness

Can 1 million users be wrong? AutoDesk Inc. is betting the answer's no and anteing up an upgrade of AutoCAD Release 14 for Microsoft Windows 9x and Windows NT 4.0. Most new products are adopting 2000-style names these days, but the new AutoCAD 2000 is in fact more like 4000though its $3,750 retail price is probably worthwhile for many AutoCAD users.

By GCN
May 10, 1999

PTO prepares RFP for desktop, portable PCs

Patent and Trademark Office officials this week will release a desktop PC request for proposals tailored to small-business contractors with 100 or fewer employees. PTO posted a Commerce Business Daily Online announcement at www.cbdnet.access.gpo.gov on April 27 for the Desktop Acquisition contract, known as DART. Through the buy, PTO will buy desktop and portable computers, printers and other peripherals. The agency has 8,000 PCs.

By Bill Murray, GCN
May 10, 1999

Want to spruce up Internet software? Slip it some skin

So-called skins add a new look and feel to aging programs. They are nothing new; online gamers have used skins for years. Developers caught on to them as a convenient way to import and manage third-party features in an existing application. Skins can be an interface to plug-in modules or software.

By GCN
May 10, 1999

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 unexpectedlythey 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.

By GCN
May 10, 1999

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.

By Christopher J. Dorobek, GCN
May 10, 1999

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.

By GCN
May 10, 1999

Army puts a premium on retaining its IT staff

NORFOLK, Va.The Army wants its systems to be all they can beand 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

By Bill Murray, GCN
May 10, 1999

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 managenot technicians."

By Richard W. Walker, GCN
May 10, 1999

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.

By William Jackson, GCN
May 10, 1999

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.

By Bill Murray, GCN
May 10, 1999

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