V.90 modems
The 56-Kbps modem standards wars are over, and users are the winners. The ratification of the V.90 standard last September by the International Telecommunications Union stopped the squabbling between modem vendors supporting the incompatible x2 or K56Flex protocols for 56-Kbps analog modems. Now, any x2 and K56Flex modem with V.90 protocols works with any other. Feature-rich V.90 products flooded the market as prices ebbed.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
DOD set to test travel system
About 200,000 Defense Department employees in 11 midwestern states will start planning their trips through a new uniform temporary duty system, once it finishes operational tests this year. "We'll go to Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo., in April or May to test it live with airmen on TDY before we turn the switch on," said Army Col. Albert Arnold III, the project manager.
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.
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.
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.
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."
IPNet Solutions creates a suite to make enterprisewide e-commerce easy to use
The key to making electronic commerce work is 100 percent participation, according to Robert Shields, marketing director for IPNet Solutions Inc. of Newport Beach, Calif. "The way you get that is to lower the cost and make it simpler to use," Shields said. The company's IP.Net.Suite includes IP.object.link, which lets trading partners exchange any type of data or business object created by various enterprise resource planning applications.
The reliability factor
It wasn't so long ago that the federal government had a reputation for buying lots of clone PCs, often of poor quality. Reliance on cumbersome requirements contracts and policies that restricted buys to the lowest price pro- duced this result. Sometimes machines arrived still needing assembly. Along came total cost of ownership, procurement reform, wide-open General Services Administration schedule contracts, governmentwide acquisition contracts and online buying. In a few years, a measure of market dynamics entered federal computer
Access America opens a full-service site for seniors
The National Partnership for Reinventing Government has unveiled a Web site designed to provide senior citizens with access to multiple government services. Access America for Seniors at www.seniors.gov is under the auspices of Vice President Al Gore's Access America program. The seniors program comes just a month after Gore presented Access America for Students, which serves up government services for students [GCN, March 29, Page 9].
This device lets you peek into your network's future
Box Score: A Every network administrator needs a crystal ball. Most practitioners of the black art of network management rely on software tools such as Hewlett-Packard Co.'s OpenView or IBM Corp.'s Tivoli/TME. The GCN Lab took a peek at a hardware crystal ball, the Kinnetics Network Manager from Loran Technologies Inc.
GTSI upgrades ordering site for federal users
Leading reseller Government Technology Services Inc. last month upgraded its Web ordering site to attract electronic commerce orders, particularly IMPAC credit card orders of less than $10,000. The Web site at www.gtsi.com maintains supporting links at the left side throughout and links to GTSI's government information technology portal on the right side, said Karla Knickerbocker, Web marketing manager for the Chantilly, Va., company.
Breaking News
Jerry Edgerton, MCI WorldCom's senior vice president of government markets, said the company already has begun taking orders from USDA offices. Agriculture chief information officer Anne F. Thomson Reed said that third-party contractors will help with the transition, but that MCI WorldCom's support for the switchover was a factor in its selection over competing contractor Sprint Corp. "It was a unanimous decision within the department," Reed said.
CIO Council: The next stop is security
As personnel costs rise, agencies will become more dependent on information technology to do their jobs, said G. Edward DeSeve, the outgoing chairman of the federal Chief Information Officers Council. Before a standing-room-only crowd of more than 400 people at a keynote session last month at the FOSE trade show in Washington, the CIO Council's executive leadership painted a picture of the government IT landscape when the year 2000 problem no longer monopolizes time and resources.
USPS starts on foundation for electronic services
The Postal Service has awarded a four-year, $22 million noncompetitive contract to Secure Computing Corp. to help develop and implement its Security Infrastructure Plan. USPS is modernizing its business practices to be Web-enabled, said John Sekevitch, vice president and general manager of professional services for the San Jose, Calif., company. "The idea is to become more competitive," he said.
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. Federal webmasters workshop. Bethesda, Md. Contact the World Wide Web Federal Consortium; phone: 703-288-0171; e-mail: fedweb@encmkt.com; Web: www.fedweb.org. Conference. Salt Lake City. Contact Hill Air Force Base; phone: 801-777-7411; e-mail: dovenbad@software.hill.af.mil; Web: www.stc-online.org.
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