Seven Interior employees honored for work in systems development
The Interior employees received their awards at a recent GCN Forum luncheon in Washington. Honored were:
No risk, no gain
What if they had a procurement and nobody came? To some extent, that is what is happening at the General Services Administration. It is trying to launch a national digital certificate project, Access Certificates for Electronic Services. No vendors are clamoring to bid on ACES even though GSA has made many revisions to its request for proposals. The haggling dates back nearly a year. The need for a uniform approach to digital signatures in the
GSA official to naysayers: Federal EC is here
Despite the conventional wisdom that electronic commerce has been slow to develop, one key proponent said the world of the electronic government is already here. There have been some radical changes in the way government does business, said G. Martin Wagner, associate administrator of the General Services Administration's Office of Governmentwide Policy.
Data warehousing tools
The term data warehousing was coined just six years ago by W.H. Inmon, a noted database expert and founder of Pine Cone Systems Inc. of Edgewood, Colo. Though widely used, it's also largely misunderstood. Before we look at specific types of data warehousing tools, let's clarify a few terms.
Reports tie IT weaknesses to agencies' problems | GCN
A set of reports recently sent to Congress point up flaws in government management and identify troubled information technology efforts as interlinked with the problems. In one report, the inspectors general of 24 agencies listed what they consider the government's most serious management and performance problems. Meanwhile, in a series of reports on government's riskiest programs, the General Accounting Office said most agencies lack clear systems architectures, making it difficult for them to build interoperable systems.
Product Reviews
As with most product claims, you have to study the small print. The good news: Small print is legible with all these printers. The last time I reviewed high-end network laser printers [GCN, June 28, 1997, Page 37], the test machines were difficult to network. I applaud Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp. and Xerox Corp. for making printer administration much easier.
Customs asks: Can ports work if computers fail?
The Customs Service will soon switch exclusively to pen and paper at one of its ports—at least for a day. The test is to see how a port will function if it does not have computers for a day, headquarters spokesman Dennis Murphy said. Interestingly, year 2000 preparation is not the driving force behind the test, although the result could help with the agency's year 2000 contingency planning.
House reform committee drops 'oversight' from its name only
The start of the 106th Congress has seen a change in the name of the House committee that is the chief overseer of government information technology policy. During its organizational meeting this month, the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee officially shortened its name to the House Government Reform Committee. Committee members said they agreed to the change in part to avoid confusion with the House Oversight Committee. The new name reflects no change in the work
Group plans satellite network to tap virtual data warehouses
Using a constellation of 288 low-Earth-orbiting-satellites, Teledesic LLC and its partners will create the world's first network to provide affordable, worldwide fiber-like access to telecommunications. Called the Teledesic Network, the $9 billion project will enable broadband telecommunications access for business, schools and individuals everywhere on the planet and will allow easy access to giant virtual data warehouses.
Briefing Book
Son of Star Wars. The Defense Department plans to spend $6.6 billion over the next six years developing a system to protect the continental United States from ballistic missile attack. Officials say the National Missile Defense System will include a satellite sensor to detect missile launches, an early-warning radar to track flight paths, a ground radar to target missiles and a ground-launched interceptor to destroy them.
IBM's Microdrive, world's smallest drive, stores up to 340M of data
At a size of 1 inch square by 5 millimeters thick and a weight of 20 grams, IBM Corp.'s minuscule Microdrive can store up to 340M of data. The Microdrive conforms to the CompactFlash Type II standard and has a platter with a read/write/seek head. Its form factor is the same as for solid-state flash memory cards used in digital cameras, but the Microdrive has more than five times the capacity. It is about one-third
The Rat finds millions of good reasons not to fix faulty date code
Packet Rat R. Fink The year 2000 crisis has finally gained our chief executive's attention, at least budgetwise. The Rat rejoices that his late-night rap sessions with Al and Tipper have paid off, but it is a little late. The fiscal 2000 budget proposal, even if approved on time, doesn't kick in until October. That leaves three months to apply the information technology funds to emergency triage.
USPS hands mail supervisors Windows CE on handheld PCs
A Postal Service handheld computing initiative, designed to streamline mail delivery, has become one of the nation's largest Microsoft Windows CE deployments. About 2,000 supervisors in the service's Great Lakes region, which covers Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, use Hewlett-Packard Co. 320LX and 620LX handheld units to track daily mail deliveries. Each unit runs Windows CE 2.0 and pocket versions of Microsoft Excel and Word, plus calendar, calculator, e-mail and tape recorder functions.
Some feds can't live without handhelds
Feds using handheld computers still make up a small installed base. Very small. But regular users can barely suppress their enthusiasm for these mighty mites. "I can't live without it now," said Tom Polak, systems administrator at the Geological Survey in Anchorage, Alaska, about his 3Com Corp. Palm III, the top-rated handheld in GCN's survey. "It's my alternate brain."
Data mining prospects for diamonds in the rough
The Army's Scott Optenberg says data mining has saved $1 for every 11 cents invested in the CHAMPUS medical system. Data, data everywhere. Your data warehouse is awash in data. How do you dig deep into that data, discern patterns and trends, and apply what you learn to advancing your agency's mission?
NIH opens mainframe access
Web-to-host access software has come along at the right time for Tim Barnes, branch chief at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Barnes, who heads the Intramural Technical Systems Branch, wants to put his Macintosh and PC users on an equal footing to search the institute's IBM IMS mainframe databases.
GSA expects its first Seat task order to provide better service—invisibly
The General Services Administration has begun preparing its employees for the transition from in-house run PC operations to the outsourcing of its PCs under the Seat Management Program. As GSA implements its task order, the first under Seat Management, the agency wants to alleviate users' concerns that there will be significant changes on their desktops. Officials said at an orientation for users that they expect outsourcing of the agency's PC operations to Litton PRC Inc. will
Data visualization tools give form to the content
The human eye allows us to see objects and pictures of objects quite well, and we can absorb an astonishing amount of information from what we see. Unfortunately, we do not see nearly as well the information contained in masses of numbers or similar data. It's an old problem in scientific research. And we do what scientists have done—we use charts and graphs to help us interpret the data. But consider the mass of information in
Tech Refresh
Agencies that want to distribute incoming transactions among intranet or Internet servers and ensure automatic failover can buy load-balancing hardware and software from BTG Inc.'s National Institutes of Health ImageWorld contract. The Intelligent Broker 4000 from IPivot Inc. of Poway, Calif., prioritizes incoming network traffic to improve response time for high-priority requests. IPivot's load-balancing broker supports standard router protocols such as User Datagram Protocol and Transmission Control Protocol. It runs under SunSoft Solaris, other Unix operating
The new CIO in town must gain credibility
You're a federal chief information officer—perhaps new to the job—with several top-priority action items and a to-do list so long that reading it requires making an appointment with yourself. Staff members are complaining about cost overruns and technical delays on a key software project. Congressional committee wonks are breathing down your neck about whether your agency is complying with the Information Technology Management Reform Act.
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