AOL, Linux officials are keynote highlights at April's AIIM show
The AIIM '99 trade show in Atlanta from April 11 to 15 will have as keynoters Ted Leonsis, president and chief executive officer of America Online Studios, and Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux operating system. A special government conference track set for Tuesday evening, April 13, and all the next day will cover imaging in South Carolina's retirement systems, case studies in county document automation and confidentiality issues in electronic dissemination of federal documents.
Treasury seeks savings with comm upgrade
Treasury's contract with TRW lists neither a maximum nor a minimum amount to be paid for TCS work. A new fee-for-service arrangement will let the Treasury Department build its backbone network in a fashion and at a price that will not break the bank, senior Treasury officials said.
HUD uses WinBatch launcher to connect to mainframe apps
The Housing and Urban Development Department has found a software launcher that simplifies connecting to mainframe applications and improves desktop PC productivity. WinBatch from Wilson WindowWare Inc. of Seattle can perform pre- and post-actions when calling an executable file, said Douglas R. Reese, a HUD computer specialist. Reese said WinBatch starts up internally developed applications as well as commercial apps for computer-aided design, online research and travel management. It also launches Sybase PowerBuilder and Microsoft SQL Server
Energy secretary orders offices to screen e-mail
In the wake of the espionage scandal at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, N.M., the Energy Department is taking steps to more closely analyze and screen sensitive e-mail sent by workers at its facilities. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson this month told the Senate Select Intelligence Committee that his department wants an additional $8 million added to its fiscal 2000 counterintelligence budget to implement a cyberinformation security program.
BREAKING NEWS
The Defense Information Systems Agency last week awarded three separate Defense Information Systems Network transmission services contracts worth a combined $600 million to AT&T Government Markets of Washington, MCI WorldCom Inc. and Sprint Communications Co. Transmission services under the DISN Transmission Services-CONUS Extension contracts include sub-T1 and other point-to-point services to all locations within the continental U.S. not covered by the $5 billion DISN Transmission Services-CONUS contract awarded to AT&T Corp. last year.
CIOs tell agencies to prepare for post-2000 security push
As agencies attempt to work through a myriad of rules for critical infrastructure protection, the new leadership of the Chief Information Officers Council has published guidance to all the guidance. At least four significant provisions from various government sources for critical infrastructure protection already exist, said Thomas R. Burke, assistant commissioner for the General Services Administration Federal Technology Service's Office of Information Security.
Agency execs debate seat management pros, cons
Just who in an agency should drive a seat management program? Some in government say it is the job of the chief information officer. Others say the responsibility falls to the chief financial officer. The issue was the subject of a spirited and sometimes terse debate this month during a breakfast panel sponsored by the Association for Federal IRM at the FOSE trade show in Washington.
Group works to build a presence in tech fields
Math is for girls. So are science and computers. And information technology offers women a great choice of careers. That's the message of the nonprofit professional association, Women in Technology. Women who work in IT need such a group "to provide a voice and a forum," WIT president Belkis Leong-Hong told the House Committee on Science last year.
FAA, unable to meet OMB deadlines, keeps its own schedule
The Federal Aviation Administration will meet its own March 31 target date for completing year 2000 testing, FAA's year 2000 czar said. But that is three months past the Office of Management and Budget's deadline. And FAA also will miss OMB's final readiness deadline of March 31.
Vendors inch closer to agreement on common standards for rewritable DVDs
Competing specifications for rewritable digital video disks could converge soon if drive makers adopt a new interoperability standard that the Optical Storage Technology Association has pledged to develop. OSTA of Santa Barbara, Calif., intervened after the DVD Forum, an industry group, failed to reach consensus on a standard rewritable format. "OSTA is trying to be the white horse," Ray Freeman of OSTA said. OSTA's 1997 MultiRead specification and logo, which nearly all CD-ROM drive makers have
Postal wants to put its stamp on .us domain
The Postal Service is eyeing the Internet's .us domain as an address space it could administer on behalf of U.S. citizens and organizations. USPS could provide universal, private and secure electronic addresses for all residents in the United States, the agency said in a written response to a Commerce Department request for comments about the .us domain. "The Postal Service could enhance electronic addresses by linking them to physical delivery
Test your OS first then worry about applications, drivers
In the last issue, I discussed updating PC BIOSes. This time, let's talk about operating systems—a necessary first step before you start worrying about database and spreadsheet applications. The best place to find information about Microsoft Windows, Windows NT and MS-DOS OSes is on Microsoft Corp.'s TechNet site at www.microsoft.com/technet/default.htm. It has five categories: compliant, compliant with minor issues, not compliant, not yet tested or not to be tested.
Latitude notebook, NetWare 5 win FOSE Best of Show honors
Two products tied for Best of Show honors among the winners of GCN's Best New Product Awards at FOSE this month. The Latitude LT M266ST notebook from Dell Computer Corp. and the NetWare 5 network operating system from Novell Inc. both received Best of Show honors. "We felt we had to make both a hardware and software award this year," said GCN editorial director Thomas R. Temin, one of the 14 members of the product judging panel.
Adobe art package lets users tap library of images for Web design
A new kind of art, not quite clip art or homegrown illustration, is emerging to fill the demand for fast, professional-looking Web graphics. Adobe Systems Inc.'s ImageStyler is the first serious art tool in this category. Microsoft Corp.'s PhotoDraw 2000 package, now in beta form, will come out late this year.
DOD ComputingBriefing Book
Personnel trainer. The Army this month negotiated a $1 million software license with CBT Systems of Redwood City, Calif., to give 500,000 users servicewide access to online computer training. Through the project, Army users will be able to tap CBT's library of 750 titles via the Web using CBTWeb deployment software.
Marine Corps lays the groundwork for shift to BPAs for buying PCs and servers
Following close on the Air Force's switch from requirements buys to blanket purchasing agreements, the Marine Corps Systems Command will issue a request for quotations for one or more mandatory BPAs for servers, PCs and notebook computers. The Corps could release the RFQ as early as this week, Marine officials said. Marine Corps buyers until now have used the Navy's Tactical Advanced Computer contracts to buy most PCs.
Reno kicks off cybercrime awareness campaign
Although security experts applaud a new government-industry partnership to promote cybercitizenship and fight cybercrime, several said the program's effectiveness hinges on whether it can help strengthen the nation's critical information infrastructure. The Justice Department and the Information Technology Association of America formed the Cybercitizen Partnership to prevent cybercrime, Attorney General Janet Reno announced this month at an ITAA meeting in Washington.
NSA reduces its IT staff by outsourcing legacy applications
After a couple of months' work, the National Security Agency is touting its program to outsource legacy applications as a success. Under the five-year, $20 million Breakthrough Program contract awarded to Computer Sciences Corp. last summer, NSA is outsourcing 20 legacy applications [GCN, Aug. 31, 1998, Page 3]. NSA is using savings from the reduction in personnel costs to pay for the contract. Under the contract, CSC is paid based on the number of NSA employees
FTS 2001 transition presents telecom upgrade opportunities
The government's move from decade-old FTS 2000 long-distance contracts to a new set of nonmandatory contracts will give agencies a chance to upgrade their telecommunications systems and still have enough money for new services, said Sandra Bates, deputy commissioner of the General Services Administration's Federal Technology Service. But vendors will have to move fast because the money for upgrades won't last, said FTS Commissioner Dennis J. Fischer. None of the proposals for using the federal budget
Get in the game
The ban on the federal government competing with industry is a well-established and generally sensible policy. But as the Internet revolutionizes service after service, the ban is producing fresh points of contention between agencies and vendors. Electronic tax filing is moving toward a showdown on the issue of public vs. private work. As the IRS strives to modernize both its internal systems and its service offerings, online filing is a natural growth area. The agency defaults,
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