Digital economy needs midsize buys on Net to emerge as big deal
It has been a year since the Commerce Department posted its report about the emerging digital economy at www.ggtech.com/eleccom.html. Such reports usually predict that it will soon become standard procedure to browse the Net for tank parts or paper clips. Have the reports made any difference in everyday government procurement?
Digital signature software lets agencies write off paperwork
Striving for the same level of trust accorded to ink on paper, two digital signature vendors recently announced advances in their software products. Silanis Technology Inc. of Dorval, Quebec, in March released ApproveIt 4.0 software. Earlier ApproveIt versions are in use by several military organizations to take the paper out of workflow. Cyber-Sign Inc. of San Jose, Calif., is entering the government market with its biometric signature authentication software after getting a start among health care
Letters to the Editor
Thank you for the article, "LAN project forces agency, vendor to meet in middle" [GCN, March 8, Page 8]. It draws attention to the massive, successful technology transformation that the Social Security Administration is undertaking as part of the Intelligent Workstation/LAN contract. Your story, like past articles you have run on IWS/LAN, focused on PC pricing. While this is interesting, you're missing the big picture: IWS/LAN is one of the largest, most ambitious information technology modernization
Patent database adds 20 million image files
The Patent and Trademark Office has launched one of the federal government's biggest online databases, a 2T colossus that houses both images and text of more than 2 million patents and 1 million registered and pending trademarks. The patent database, accessible at www.uspto.gov to anyone with a Web browser, previously contained only text. PTO added 20 million .tif image files to the system last month.
Tool bundles third-party resources under one roof
Help Desk 4.0 from Remedy Corp. incorporates several third-party products and has a new user interface like that of Microsoft Windows 98 and Web browsers. "A lot of federal organizations don't have time to do the help desk work themselves," said Keith Bigelow, director of product marketing and management at Remedy of Mountain View, Calif.
USPS system tracks customers' special deliveries
The Postal Service last month launched an electronic tracking option for priority mail customers who want to ensure the delivery of important letters or packages. The project cost the Postal Service $300 million to develop and implement. "It's a wonderful piece of machinery that really allows customers who deal in bulk mailings, like small and medium-size businesses, an added degree of control over their shipments," said Julie Rios, program manager
For Web page tools, change is the only constant
Getting to the Web If the move to the Web and PCs from electronic data interchange over legacy systems had a sound, it would be the roar of a tidal wave. The Web's ubiquity, flexibility and low cost all combine to make its use seem inevitable. But building a site is only the beginning. Keeping it working right presents
Justice lifts applet ban
In a continuing effort to give users access to information via the Web while protecting government systems from cyberthreats, the Justice Department has set a new applet use policy that has the approval of the National Security Agency. Four months after instituting a departmentwide ban on applets because of security concerns, Justice has lifted the moratorium on most of the script codes. The details of the new policy were included
EPA will open AIRS on Web
The Environmental Protection Agency's 10-year-old air pollution data retrieval system will soon have browser access, even though the Web is still in some respects "a pretty scary place," EPA's Tom Link said. "We don't know if we'll have 200 or 10,000 simultaneous users, but we'll find out this fall when we go into production," said Link, senior EPA manager for advanced data delivery systems in the Office of Air and Radiation.
Feds inch closer to privatizing Net management
The Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers has named five new domain registrars to work the bugs out of the new Shared Registry System during a two-month test. The registrars will be the first to compete with Network Solutions Inc. of Herndon, Va., which has been exclusive registrar for the .com, .net and .org top-level domains under a 1993 agreement with the Commerce Department.
Acrobat 4.0 viewer reduces task time to maneuver PDF documents
The new Adobe Acrobat 4.0 viewer makes it easier to create Portable Document Format documents, use Web content, secure documents and recycle content within .pdf files, according to Adobe Systems Inc. officials. Users can download entire Web sites, for example, and distribute, edit, print and scale the sites within Acrobat 4.0.
Truth about PKI isn't always common knowledge
Public-key technology, viewed by some as the solution for authentication, data integrity and security needs for transactions over open networks, and by others as a half-baked technology looking for a problem, has developed substantial mythology about what it can and cannot do. The existence of this mythology itself demonstrates a certain maturity.
The road to e-commerce is a long one
Name: Kim Mitchel, deputy associate commissioner of the Office of Telecommunications and Systems Operations Agency: Social Security Administration Length of Service: 28 years Age: 50 Education: Bachelor's degree in science education and mathematics, California University of Pennsylvania; master's degree in numerical science, Johns Hopkins University; doctoral candidate in policy sciences, University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
Electronic Commerce
The government's advance down the electronic commerce road sometimes seems like Zeno's paradox as agencies strive to go from Point A to Point B without ever getting there. If federal e-commerce appears to be progressing in slow motion, consider this: The Government Paperwork Elimination Act requires all agencies to offer to the public the option of interchanging mandatory documents electronically—including the use of digital authentication systems—by October 2003.
Cyberprotection plan is set for summer release
The Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office expects to have a national plan to thwart cyberterrorism ready by summer. Darwyn Banks, CIAO program coordinator at the Commerce Department, said National Plan 1.0 will have government and private-sector infrastructure components but will be nonregulatory. The federal government does not own the infrastructure of transportation, finance, energy or emergency response services, he said. Banks and Tom Burke, the Federal Technology Service's assistant commissioner for information security, spoke last week at
Air Force signs three BPAs for rugged portables
The Air Force Standard Systems Group last month signed three blanket purchasing agreements for rugged portable PCs. Cytec Corp. of Dallas, Government Technology Services Inc. of Chantilly, Va., and Inacom Government Systems of Fairfax, Va., will supply the rugged portables to Defense Department agencies at 5 percent to 15 percent less than their prices on General Services Administration Information Technology Schedule contracts.
Census systems get checkup
The Census Bureau met the Office of Management and Budget's March 31 deadline for fixing and testing 60 mission-critical systems for year 2000 readiness, and now it is within days of completing the scanning of all 6,000 desktop PCs. The ones that could not pass the test likely will get a terminate-and-stay-resident software fix, Gregory said, and Census will "probably replace about 100 PCs." The bureau's 12 regional offices and two telephone centers outside the Washington
Electronic data interchange tools
True or false? A. EDI is a dynamic technology and a trusted standard; keep it handy for electronic transactions. B. EDI is a dinosaur technology and a sinking ship; keep your 10-foot pole handy. Both statements are true. Electronic data interchange can be of great value to your agency, but to get that value, you must tread as though through a minefield.
With a wince, the Rat
Packet Rat R. Fink With a wince, the Rat is rewired, reconnected, perhaps reborn by NT Readers know all about the Rat's technolust for power-sucking, megahertz-pumping multiprocessor machines that run hydrodynamic simulations in the background while recompiling his latest set of homebrew drivers. But now and then something small makes the cyberrodent drool. This time it's the newest road warrior toy: a featherweight PC running Microsoft Windows CE.
HCFA will use ODIN to try seat management
The Health Care Financing Administration plans to negotiate a seat management-like task order by late June, using the Outsourcing the Desktop Initiative for NASA program. HCFA officials last month received bid proposals and heard oral presentations from ODIN contractors. "We wanted to get a feel for [seat management]. We were willing to jump in up to our ankles but not up to our necks," said Marianne Bowen, project manager for HCFA's Desktop Replacement Initiative. "This
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