Route Fifty

Program touts aid to agencies in dire straits

Comdisco Inc. has a year 2000 safety net for agencies that encounter unexpected year 2000 system failures. Comdisco's Y2K Ready Program offers special recovery facilities and other resources, said officials of the Rosemont, Ill., company. "The year 2000 date change is not an unanticipated problem and as such is not a declarable event under most disaster-recovery agreements," said Allan Graham, senior vice president.

By GCN
January 25, 1999

Code glitch leads BLS to post data early again

For the second time in three months, the Bureau of Labor Statistics accidentally posted financial data on its Web site before it was set for official release. Last time, an economist posted the data early; this time the information technology staff erred. "A person who has been in our group for five years, has a sterling work record and has apologized profusely made a mistake," said Carl J. Lowe, associate commissioner for technology and survey processing.

By Merry Mayer, GCN
January 25, 1999

Army center enhances intranet with text-mining app

SemioMap can recognize HTML and Notes documents. Using SemioMap, the Center for Army Lessons Learned at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., has mapped 50,000 pages' worth of text onto a single intranet screen. The Web text-mining application from Semio Corp. of San Mateo, Calif., represents key concepts in large volumes of unstructured text data without any initial tagging.

By Florence Olsen, GCN
January 25, 1999

No business would profit from government example

Let's imagine a retail franchise that's run like the federal government. The franchise operator cannot make product or service changes without central office approval. Complex plans must be made in anticipation of multiple funding scenarios and implementation time frames of three, six and nine months. The corporate office sets the budget each year well after its fiscal year has started. Each year the board of directors sets the annual budget; organizational and

By GCN
January 25, 1999

IG: DOD agency's report of 2000 readiness incomplete

Only 25 percent of the Defense Special Weapons Agency's mission-critical systems were tested, the IG said in a new report, Management of the Defense Special Weapons Agency Year 2000 Program. IG auditors found that the weapons agency did not complete independent testing of three mission-critical systems before classifying them as ready.

By Gregory Slabodkin, GCN
January 25, 1999

Air Force will expand systems support with BPAs worth up to $500 million

The Air Force has negotiated a series of blanket purchasing agreements to give its command and control programs a range of systems support services. The Electronic Systems Center at Hanscom Air Force Base, Mass., the contracting agency for the Information Technology Services Program (ITSP), in October issued an open-ended invitation to vendors.

By Gregory Slabodkin, GCN
January 11, 1999

Digital camera teams nicely with notebook

Pair Sony's 3-pound Vaio notebook with the 1-pound, easy-to-use Mavica digital camera, and what do you get? A field imaging system that beats the pants off the competition in the $3,000 range and leaves room in the briefcase for a clean shirt. The Vaio 505 is a tiny notebook, so it's ironic that Sony Electronic Inc.'s Mavica floppy-disk camera is so bulky.

By GCN
January 11, 1999

Unemployment payments are safe, Labor says

The Labor Department found out this month that the nation's unemployment insurance systems, overseen by the federal government but run by states, are year 2000-ready. People filing claims for unemployment benefits are assigned a benefit year, which means that as of Jan. 4 unemployment insurance systems began handling dates and calculations that extend into 2000, Clinton administration officials said late last month.

By Christopher J. Dorobek, GCN
January 11, 1999

Survey by Gore's group discovers government isn't quite reinvented

The five-year effort to reinvent government has failed to reach its full potential within agencies, according to the results of a recent survey by Vice President Al Gore's National Partnership for Reinventing Government. Of the 13,657 federal employees who responded to the survey, 35 percent said they believe their agencies have made reinvention a priority. In response to a question as to whether they understood how good performance is defined in their agencies, only 25 percent

By Christopher J. Dorobek, GCN
January 11, 1999

PCs with 3DNow technology go to extremes

With the battle cry of "more bang for your buck," Unicent Technologies of Aurora, Ohio, has introduced its Extreme series of PCs. The beating heart of the systems is American Micro Device's K6 chip with MMX technology and K6-2 chip with 3DNow technology. With CPU speeds ranging from 266 MHz to 350 MHz, the computers are well armed for cruising the Internet, using multimedia capability and doing tasks required by business applications.

By Gina M. Roos, GCN
January 11, 1999

Norton 2000's our choice of PC readiness packages

TEST DRIVE GCN Lab Product Table There are 355 days left until 2000. As you scurry to ready the last holdout systemsoften including those pesky standalone PCshere is a comparative review of seven PC test tools. Atop the heap is Symantec Corp.'s Norton 2000, which earned the Reviewer's Choice designation from the GCN Lab.

By Michael Cheek, GCN
January 11, 1999

Risk assessment tool scans LAN for possible date code chicanery

Need a quick assessment of your network's date code status? Year 2000 Scan & Fix, a risk assessment tool from Elron Software Inc., examines each layer of a PC LAN, including system BIOSes, operating systems, applications, user data and imported data. After completing the audit, Scan & Fix issues a report on all the network's date code problems.

By GCN
January 11, 1999

EPA gives paper heave-ho for hazardous waste reports

The Environmental Protection Agency has begun testing the use of digital signatures to authenticate information received electronically from handlers of hazardous waste. The agency recently began Phase 2 of a three-phase pilot aimed at making most of its communications with hazardous waste handlersthose generating, transporting and storing such wastepaperless. The Hazardous Waste Manifest System is a set of forms, reports and procedures that EPA uses to track hazardous waste from its generation to its final destination. The

By Merry Mayer, GCN
January 11, 1999

Survey: Legal liability of Web access a top concern

The No. 1 concern for managers who use Internet access management tools is legal liability, followed closely by employee productivity, according to a recent survey by NetPartners Internet Solutions Inc. of San Diego. "Government buyers are less concerned about legal liability than their private counterparts, but both still rate legal liability as the top concern," said Bryan Wampler, NetPartners' public relations manager.

By William Jackson, GCN
January 11, 1999

New criminal background check system for gun dealers draws on three databases

When the National Instant Criminal Background Check System went on line at 9 a.m., Nov. 30, the response was overwhelming. One gun dealer called asking for 99 background checks on prospective gun buyers. That call took up the whole four-hour shift of one part-time employee, said Jim Kessler, NICS program manager at the FBI.

By Merry Mayer, GCN
January 11, 1999

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