New year ushers in new wants, wishes on cyberspace front
January is a good time to take a look ahead. Here are some things to watch—and wish—for in the coming year: Why not develop a similar seal for government sites? Some agencies take weeks to respond to e-mail from citizens. Others do not update their Web sites often enough to identify correct contacts. What's needed is a minimum standard for federal Web site maintenance and a seal to show who meets it and who is asleep
INTERVIEW | Mark Day, EPA's IT edge man | GCN
| Mark Day, EPA's IT edge man Before coming to EPA in 1993, Day was CIO for environmental quality at the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. His work experience includes automating Missouri's inventory tracking and client scheduling for the state's weather program. Day has a bachelor's degree in political science and history from Southwest Baptist University, and he has done graduate work in IT.
Labs sport collaborative look
Scientists who move into new National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration laboratories in Boulder, Colo., will find a state-of-the-art asynchronous transfer mode network waiting for them. "Modern research lives or dies by its network and communications capabilities," said Britt Bassett, network manager for NOAA's Boulder labs. "There's a lot of collaborative research going on here that has been hindered" by inadequate network links between buildings scattered across the area.
Justice bans Net
Fearing a potentially disastrous cyberbreach of its systems, the Justice Department has taken a hard-core stance on applets: It has banned them. Responding to security concerns, the department is blocking script code such as Java, JavaScript and ActiveX from download via the Internet or e-mail messages because of the potential risks such code poses, said Mark A. Boster, assistant attorney general for IRM and the department's deputy chief information officer.
IRS will take delivery of 10,300 Micron PCs
Through a $26.7 million order from a General Services Administration schedule contract, the IRS last year bought 10,300 PCs from Micron Electronics Inc. IRS tax examiners will use the 6,800 TransPort Trek2 notebooks and 3,500 Milennia desktop PCs, ordered through ComTeq Federal Inc.'s Treasury Department Acquisition blanket purchasing agreement, said Greg Roseman, IRS contracting officer for TDA BPAs.
COMMUNICATIONS | New Products | GCN
| New Products Gigabit extends to campus distances A Hewlett-Packard Co. module for selected models in the HP ProCurve line of switches can extend Gigabit Ethernet service over campus backbones. The $1,999 Gigabit-LX module supplies a single-port, long-distance Gigabit Ethernet connection for the ProCurve 8000M, 4000M and 1600M switches.
Navy's '99 resolution: trim fat from systems support
SAN DIEGO—Faced with shrinking budgets servicewide, the Navy has launched a pilot at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command to explore the use of regional information technology services. SPAWAR is taking the lead for the Navy in developing an enterprisewide approach to the service's fractured IT infrastructure. The command's pilot is a proof-of-concept project to demonstrate that the Navy can save money by changing the way it does business.
Packet Rat
Packet Rat R. Fink Politics reduces productivity; the Rat is certain of it. "Just look at Congress," he sighs. So the whiskered one purges politics—at least national and regional politics—from the workplace. Or at least he tries. As a former nautical creature, he has applied several rules of conduct in his office that he brought with him from his days in the wardroom. Chief among these is that it is inappropriate
SSA will deliver even if banks aren't ready for 2000
The Social Security Administration may not have heard the last of the year 2000 problem, despite President Clinton's proclamation last month that the agency's systems are ready and that Social Security payments are not at risk. The hitch? The distribution of Social Security benefits hinges not only on the administration's systems but those of financial institutions, too. The readiness of those systems is less sure.
'99 shockers: Contracts and acronyms run amok! | GCN
With a new year comes the columnist's tradition of predicting major developments of the coming 12 months. This year, I'm going out on a limb to make some really specific predictions. Jeanne Dixon, watch out. Someone will realize that the cause of the year 2000 problem is not computer programming at all. The reason we have this problem is, of course, because we have a year numbered 2000. And the reason the coming year has this
HCFA is 'fully focused' on year 2000 repairs, HHS IT chief says
After a poor start on year 2000 work and with much still to be done, the Health Care Financing Administration acknowledges that it is unlikely that all HCFA systems will be ready in time. Despite the setbacks, HCFA is making progress, said Neil J. Stillman, deputy assistant secretary for IRM at the Health and Human Services Department.
First of two FTS 2000 contracts goes to Sprint
The multibillion-dollar FTS 2001 first-round contract that the General Services Administration awarded last month to Sprint Corp. promises voice and data savings of up to 60 percent, or $3.8 billion, over eight years. Under the decade-old FTS 2000 contract, Sprint has had 24 percent of federal voice and data business. AT&T Corp. has had 76 percent.
RealPort Ethernet hits high note on quality scale
Some products you want for their glamour or status: a Louis Vuitton suitcase, a Tiffany & Co. diamond ring, a Patek Philippe watch. Other products have a reputation for reliability and durability: Levi Strauss & Co. jeans, for example, or Maytag washers. Then there are products whose cachet is based on their quality.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR | GCN
I find I'm not satisfied with your conclusion that Microsoft Windows NT bore no fault in the failure aboard the Yorktown ("Navy: Calibration flaw crashed Yorktown LAN" [GCN, Nov. 9, Page 6]). While these days the statement that NT was not the cause of the failure may be true, using some strict definition of the word cause, NT certainly failed to provide protection from a simple application error.
GSA recommends setting fees for shared Web services
What type of fee should your agency charge for Web services? Any agency that offers centrally organized Web services needs to establish a fee-for-services policy, the General Services Administration recommends. Cost-sharing will promote efficient use of Web services, GSA's Office of Governmentwide Policy said in a recently released draft version of a Web site management policy.
GCN reviewer finds himself awed by power of new PC
Making the switch from a mainstream office computer to the ultimate workstation-class PC can be a bit daunting, even for an enthusiast. As soon as I knew the huge box had been shipped, I began to track it via the Web. I wondered how the truck driver was doing and hoped that he would not hit many potholes.
BUYERS GUIDE
To take arms against a sea of computer troubles—power outages, hard drive failures, server crashes—you can choose from a veritable arsenal of weapons. To tame a virus, however, software is your best choice. And of the threats to federal systems, the computer virus is one of the most pervasive.
Service Pack 4 for NT fixes a swarm of bugs
TEST DRIVE Service Pack 4 for Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 is a cornucopia of patches and fixes, plus enhancements from the Windows NT Resource Kit and Windows NT Enterprise Edition. NT users can download the 76M pack for free or buy it on CD-ROM. As with installing any Microsoft service pack, proceed with caution. Many sites running NT had systems failures from Service Pack 2, so don't neglect the obvious first step: Back up your systems.
LAB NOTES
If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. The timeworn phrase pretty much sums up this year in information technology. The industry failed to score a blockbuster success in 1998, although plenty of companies tried. Microsoft Corp. topped the field by releasing service packs in volume for Office, Exchange 5.5, Microsoft Windows NT 4.0, Systems Network Architecture Server and Visual Studio, in addition to dozens of patches and fixes.
Navy keeps its options open in deal with Lotus
Capitalizing on Lotus Development Corp.'s eagerness to make a big enterprise sale in the government market, the Navy has signed a multiyear contract to deploy Lotus groupware widely without an up-front commitment. The Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command is conducting a 4,220-user pilot to determine whether Lotus' Domino Server 5.0 and Notes 5.0 client products—including a Defense Message System client—work well and can foster a good business relationship between Lotus and the
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