Route Fifty

OCC's data warehouse will be the sum of its marts

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has created an information architecture to help it build a data warehouse, one data mart at a time, over the next several years. The warehouse has to be built as a multimart environment, the office's senior data analyst Vance Kane said. "We have different lines of businessfinancial institutions, human resources. To have one database warehouse is fantasyland from my perspective," he said.

By Merry Mayer, GCN
April 12, 1999

SPSS statistics company buys into business data mining

SPSS Inc. is in the business intelligence market with its $7.1 million purchase of Integral Solutions Ltd., a British data mining company. "The data mining market is rapidly consolidating down to a small number of vendors," said Don MacTavish, a senior research analyst at Meta Group Inc. of Stamford, Conn. "SPSS has the potential to be one of the leaders."

By Bill Murray, GCN
April 12, 1999

ENTERPRISE COMPUTING | Beat the Clock

| Beat the Clock Despite the intense public focus on Jan. 1, 2000, GartnerGroup predicts that only about 10 percent of all year 2000-related problems will show up in the two weeks after Jan. 1. Most organizations' contingency plans are overly concerned with Jan. 1, ignoring other critical dates, said Lou Marcoccio, year 2000 research director for the Stamford, Conn., information technology research firm.

By GCN
April 12, 1999

FCC has its failings, but who else could police the Internet?

The Federal Communications Commission is coming under fire this month as the House Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Trade opens hearings on whether the commission is due for a major overhaul. Does the aging agency still merit a position of power in the new, convergent telecommunications world? Congress wants to know how well FCC is handling the fallout from this explosive trend.

By GCN
April 12, 1999

Firewalls are still vulnerable

Computer security products are worthless unless installed properly, a security expert told a FOSE trade show audience in Washington last month. Agencies should devise a checklist of effective security practices, recompute their technology risks every two weeks and constantly verify that their systems are reasonably secure, advised Peter S. Tippett, president of the International Computer Security Association Inc. of Carlisle, Pa.

By Bill Murray, GCN
April 12, 1999

OMB orders Y2K tests of critical services systems

OMB identifies must-run services As the March 31 deadline for year 2000 readiness becomes a memory, federal agencies have two primary targets: high-impact services and systems deemed important if not mission-critical. The Clinton administration announced last month that 92 percent of the government's 6,123 mission-critical systems met the deadline. But a staff member for the House's special Y2K Task Force said the administration needs to move its focus

By Christopher J. Dorobek, GCN
April 12, 1999

App can take a crashed system back in time

Box Score: B GoBack Wild File Inc., Plymouth, Minn.; tel. 612-551-9998 www.goback.com Price: $69.95 Pros and cons: +Restores entire system to a previous configuration +Records document versions for emergency retrieval +Has supplemental virus protection  Needs 10 percent of hard drive to work properly Windows 9x, 486 or faster processor, 16M of RAM, CD-ROM drive, 10 percent of hard drive capacity

By John Breeden II, GCN
April 12, 1999

Lee fills in as OMB deputy director

Deidre A. Lee, Office of Federal Procurement Policy administrator, has been named acting deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget. Lee takes over for G. Edward DeSeve, who left the post at the end of last month. She will fill both jobs as the Clinton administration seeks a candidate for the deputy director post, OMB spokeswoman Linda Richie said.

By GCN
April 12, 1999

EPA faces Web impasse

Bowing to pressure from lawmakers and the government's national security community, the Environmental Protection Agency will not post online its worst-case projections of the release of toxins by chemical plants. After Rep. Tom Bliley (R-Va.) began looking into the plans for posting the data, national security officials raised concerns that such data could increase the possibility of terrorist attacks.

By Christopher J. Dorobek, GCN
April 12, 1999

Second wave of Y2K test tools rolls in

Year 2000 testing tools are bombarding the market. The GCN Lab recently looked at five, the second batch the lab reviewed. Three months ago, I took a first look at year 2000 tools for desktop PCs [GCN, Jan. 11, Page 1]. The feedback was overwhelming. It came less from readers than from merchants who sell other year 2000 software utilities, each asking why I had not included their products.

By Michael Cheek, GCN
April 12, 1999

FAA inches toward modernization with new Host

The Federal Aviation Administration last month unveiled a central component of its air traffic systems modernization. Since February, FAA has been overseeing an upgrade of its Host air traffic control systems. Into the fall, the agency plans to take down its old IBM Corp. systems at 20 en route centers nationwide and replace them with IBM 9672 Model RA4 parallel-processing servers.

By Frank Tiboni, GCN
April 12, 1999

Cost analyst reviews systems support bids, speeding Energy procurement by 3 months

The Energy Department estimates that buying reforms helped it shave three months off procurement of systems support services for its nuclear weapons stockpile program. Energy for the first time used a government cost analyst to review the contractors' best initial offers, and a five-person team to evaluate bidders' two-hour presentations, said Ray Greenberg, a program analysis officer in Energy's Defense Programs Office.

By Frank Tiboni, GCN
April 12, 1999

Census Bureau will count on EDS to run telephone network in 2000

The Census Bureau has taken the first step in preparing for the onslaught of telephone calls it will receive from people with questions about the 2000 Decennial Census. The bureau recently awarded the two-year, $100 million Telephone Questionnaire Assistance contract to Electronic Data Systems Corp. EDS and eight subcontractors will build and run a multilanguage telephone assistance network supporting 30 call centers across the country. EDS will supply the staff members for the centers.

By Frank Tiboni, GCN
April 5, 1999

USIA uses Web and e-mail to get out its Kosovo story

When the Serbian government expelled the media from Kosovo as NATO began its Yugoslav bombing raids last month, U.S. officials turned to the Web and a list server to communicate with journalists. The U.S. Information Agency is using a list server to deliver NATO and U.S. policy information via e-mail to journalists and human rights organizations, said Jonathan Spalter, USIA's chief information officer.

By Frank Tiboni, GCN
April 5, 1999

In contracting language, close doesn't count

Theology, like the law of government contracts, often makes big distinctions between similar objects. The late Chief Justice Warren Burger was fond of the following story: A woman asked an Anglican bishop, "Your Eminence, pray tell me about the differences between seraphim and cherubim." The bishop replied, "There were indeed once differences between the two, but they have composed their differences, and now all is serene."

By GCN
April 5, 1999

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