FTS awards first two contracts for satellite services
The General Services Administration's Federal Technology Service has awarded the first two in a series of satellite communications contracts to Hughes Global Services Inc. of El Segundo, Calif., and John Tidrow and Associates Inc. of Fayetteville, N.C. Each contract is worth up to $50 million in the first year and as much as $50 million more if GSA picks up two six-month options. Federal users can order fixed, mobile, temporary
Beyond.com wins DLA software distribution contract
The Defense Logistics Agency has awarded its second electronic software distribution contract to Beyond.com, formerly software.net, of Sunnyvale, Calif. The latest DLA contract, whose value was not announced, follows a $50 million award to the same company two years ago for up to 70,000 licenses for Microsoft Corp. desktop and server packages plus software upgrades for up to five years.
HCFA begins code checkups
The Health Care Financing Administration has turned to one of the oldest independent validation and verification vendors in the mission-critical software business to ensure that Medicare and Medicaid systems will process claims without disruption after Jan. 1. AverStar Inc. of Burlington, Mass., will work with HCFA's quality assurance teams and outside contractors. The company also provides software quality assurance to NASA's space shuttle and International Space Station programs.
Army firewall contracts near
The Army's contracts for licensing intrusion-detection and firewall software for all its LANs and WANs will be awarded within weeks, perhaps days. Bids were due in early February in the full-and-open competition, said Connie Avallone, a contracting officer at the Army Communications-Electronics Command Acquisition Center–Southwest Region at Fort Huachuca, Ariz. The service may award as many as four one-year contracts with four one-year options, she said.
The AF uses license to buy 65,000 copies of Oracle
When the Air Force signed a three-year, $52 million site license for Oracle Corp. database software and development tools last month, it marked a new lease on life for the Defense Department's Integrated Computer-Aided Software Engineering contract. The Air Force also took the lead as DOD's top site licenser. Air Force logistics users, who work in more than 20 programs, will get 65,000 concurrent Oracle licenses at a 74 percent discount from the General Services Administration Information
Ada Lovelace's work created a plan for the future
Her goal was to show how the Analytical Engine could calculate without the intervention of "human hand or head." Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers, by Betty A. Poole, Strawberry Press, Sausalito, Calif., 1998. For women in information technology, Ada Lovelace is the magna mater—a bold visionary who in 1843 was the first to write a program for Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine, a precursor of the modern computer.
Tech transfer begets map app
Working with a small business, the Navy is customizing big mapping applications through technology transfer without shelling out big bucks. "A lot of innovation comes out of small companies," said Carol Van Wyk, small-business innovation research program manager at the Naval Air Systems Command. Through a $70,000 feasibility study followed by a two-year, $750,000 contract, the Navy developed a prototype terrain-following system that uses a file format called GeoTIFF.
Gore backs all-access pilot to bring online services to college students
The Education Department will spearhead a program to let college students find services online beginning this fall. The program, called Access America for Students, is based on Vice President Al Gore's Access America plan and will give students access to both government and commercial services. Federal agencies, academic institutions and vendors will align their resources to serve students and enable complete government transactions online, Gore said.
Agencies should compete to comply with FOIA
Implementing the amendments to the 1996 Electronic Freedom of Information Act is giving some agencies fits. The first example comes from December's release by the FBI of its Frank Sinatra files. The files ended up on the Internet, but the FBI didn't post them there. Who did and why? Journalists routinely make FOIA requests to the FBI for the files of every celebrity and political figure who dies. The FBI is paying for the investigative excesses of
Women make the grade in IT
When Anne Thomson Reed was interviewed for a top job at Agriculture, she was asked if she could be effective in a department of mostly men. Reed had spent the previous 12 years in management in the Navy. The gender issue, she told them, "is not a problem." Highly valued for their technical and managerial skills, Reed and other women have reached the top ranks of information technology management in the federal government.
Spread the word on agency goals
Remember Telephone, the children's game where the kids sit in a circle? The game begins when a child whispers a phrase to a neighbor's ear, and then it is repeated in turn to each kid in the circle. Invariably by the time the phrase travels completely around the circle, the original sentence, "I went to the shack with Benny and got a soda," has become "Take Penny out back and shoot her."
Professional Calendar
Luncheon address. Washington. Contact Government Computer News; phone: 301-650-2000; Web: www.gcn.com. Conference. Atlantic City, N.J. Contact MailCom; phone: 607-746-7600; Web: www.mailcom-conference.com. Conference. Philadelphia. Contact the Association for Data Center, Network and Enterprise Systems Management; phone: 714-997-7966; Web: www.afcom.com. Conference. Huntsville, Ala. Contact TABES Program Committee; phone: 256-837-4347; e-mail: jweiner@aol.com; Web: www.tabes.org.
What works together?
My PC at home has hit the magic age of three, meaning it's a dinosaur. Yet it does what my family demands of it. Recently, it's been acting squirrelly, so I loaded the latest version of a popular utility suite. Naturally, that turned into a five-hour fiddling marathon one Sunday afternoon. The product, which presents itself as a veritable Swiss army knife of functions, leaves me with two suspicions:
Bid protests, while unpopular, benefit the process
In a recent published article, Steven Kelman, former administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, applauded the shrinking number of bid protests. This may be reason to celebrate, but not for the reasons Kelman cited. When Kelman was OFPP administrator, he worked assiduously for the elimination of bid protests, helping to end the bid protest jurisdiction of the General Services Administration Board of Contract Appeals.
Trailblazers leave footprints for others to follow
In interviewing women in federal information technology, GCN sought to find out who these women are, where they are, how they got where they are and what the journey was like. What follows are the answers we got from nine women in different agencies, in different aspects of IT, and at different points in their careers.
CIOs honor Koskinen for IT leadership
The Chief Information Officers Council this month presented John A. Koskinen with its first Azimuth Award for his work as the administration's year 2000 czar. The council plans to give the award annually to someone who has provided vision and direction to government information technology. The group recognized Koskinen during a dinner cruise aboard the Potomac Spirit in Washington.
Agencies show interest in switching to Gigabit Ethernet
Several networking companies expect Gigabit Ethernet to move off the test bed and onto the backbone this year. "Growth is in the range of 70 percent to 80 percent a quarter," said James Mustarde, director of marketing communications for Allied Telesyn International Corp. of Sunnyvale, Calif. "We are getting a lot of de-mand from people who want to introduce Gigabit on the backbone and in server farms."
For her, retirement's just a beginning
After 29 years in the federal government, Belkis Leong-Hong retired in January from her post as chief information officer of the Defense Security Service. Leong-Hong began her government service at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and then worked at the National Bureau of Standards. In 1981, she joined the Defense Department.
IRS: New effort at modernizing must start fresh
IRS sets six filing goals Following a decade of failed modernization efforts, the IRS is essentially starting over, a senior IRS executive said this month. The last modernization effort was a $3.3 billion failure, said Albert E. Mazei, assistant commissioner for the IRS' Program Management and Architecture Office.
Rat speaks his mind on mental state of ardent Novell faithful in Utah
Packet Rat R. Fink Rat speaks his mind on mental state of ardent Novell faithful in Utah Once again it was time for the Rat to live high on the old per diem, and where better than Salt Lake City? Well, maybe there are better places, but the cyberrodent had skipped Novell Inc.'s annual BrainShare conference for too many years.
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