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.
TimeStep's built-in certificate authority simplifies VPN planning
Easy configuration and solid security features distinguish TimeStep Corp.'s newest Permit/Gate 4520 virtual private networking device. It has a built-in certificate authority (CA) that greatly simplifies configuration of multiple VPNs. A network manager enters the configuration information once into a central CA, and it downloads to each VPN device coming online.
CIO Council proposes PC personal use policy for feds
How strict must agencies be about employees using e-mail for personal messages—say, from an office PC to a kid in college? How about buying something online, such as a book from Amazon.com? The Chief Information Officers Council says government employees' use of agency computers needs to be managed but not micromanaged, according to a draft guidance the group will soon submit to lawmakers.
Agencies keep secret data out of wrong hands by wiping the data off drives
A degausser/eraser device acts like a paper shredder for computer hard drives, floppy diskettes and other magnetic media. When agencies replace their PCs, some erase any hard drives that have stored data classified as confidential, secret or top-secret. Other agencies physically destroy the drives, said Terry Creek, regional manager for Security Engineered Machinery Inc., a Westborough, Mass., seller of degausser/eraser products.
ENTERPRISE COMPUTING | Beat the Clock
| Beat the Clock HCFA started in earnest only a year ago to make year 2000 fixes, and for months it has weathered the scorn of year 2000 congressional watchdog Rep. Steve Horn (R-Calif.). Last month, HCFA officials told Congress that work on mission-critical systems is 70 percent complete.
TrueSpace4 projects a strong light on virtual environments
TrueSpace4 from Caligari Corp. costs far less than Hollywood-style 3-D rendering software and has amazing powers, whether you plan to simulate a vehicle crash, design courseware or simply make an eye-popping Web graphic. Like previous versions, TrueSpace4 is strong at lighting effects. Precise lighting makes a virtual room look realistic, whereas bad lighting can make anything look fake.
VersaPath gateway products send mainframe data over IP networks
VersaPath Web-to-host gateway products from Kasten Chase Applied Research Ltd. of Mississauga, Ontario, deliver mainframe data and applications over IP networks. VersaPath comes with desktop PC client, browser client and thin client software, as well as a developer kit for ActiveX custom applications. Kasten Chase has provided host connectivity for terminals at Agriculture Department county offices across the United States through several generations of its products. Dave Mulder, the company's director of technology, said some USDA offices
Circuit-switched DTM channels deliver IP services
The DynaSwitch 100A is touted as the first commercial switch based on dynamic synchronous transfer mode (DTM) technology, which can guarantee quality of service for IP traffic. DTM, developed in Sweden by the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology and Ericsson Telecom AB, integrates voice, video and data and ensures availability of IP applications.
Markup language update
Sidebars & Related Stories Tips for buyers What do you bet that the 1990s will be known in the next millennium as the Internet decade?
GSA dials for more dollars
The Federal Technology Service's next round of Metropolitan Area Acquisitions for local telephone service will not necessarily go to cities with large numbers of General Services Administration customers. The word came from Margaret C. Binns, an FTS assistant commissioner, speaking at last month's Federal Telecommunications Conference sponsored by Telestrategies Inc. of McLean, Va.
Do Not Sell My Personal Information
When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.
Manage Consent Preferences
Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active
We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.
Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies
Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link
If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.
Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.
Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.
If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.
Cookie List
A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:
Strictly Necessary Cookies
We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.
Functional Cookies
We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.
Performance Cookies
We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.
Sale of Personal Data
We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.
Social Media Cookies
We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.
Targeting Cookies
We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.