NASA adopts electronic forms, workflow to manage closeouts of its subcontracts
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has installed electronic forms and workflow software to simplify closing out its subcontracts. The Pasadena, Calif., lab works with scores of aerospace and information technology subcontractors, said Francine Fisher, a member of JPL's Acquisition Division. Operated by the California Institute of Technology, JPL is NASA's lead center for robotic exploration of the solar system.
Readying for 2000: One agency's story
When Federal Aviation Administration chief Jane Garvey and Ray Long, head of the agency's year 2000 program, board a plane Dec. 31, 1999, for their much-publicized flight across the continent, it will be neither a rash publicity stunt nor a stunning act of bravado, the two officials have repeatedly said.
GPEA is a giant step toward hassle-free government
The passage of the Government Paperwork Elimination Act means that major changes are in the wind for federal information technology. Despite a lack of fanfare, this legislation promises to be as significant as the Brooks Act of 1965, the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980 and its 1995 amendments, or the Information Technology Management and Reform Act of 1996.
STARS work continues after GAO denies Keane's protest of INS contract award
After four months of delay, the Immigration and Naturalization Service can move forward with a contract aimed at improving 73 of its information technology systems now that the General Accounting Office has denied a protest of the project's contract award. At issue was the second phase of the Service Technology Alliance Resource program. STARS has three components: systems management and integration, performance, and independent verification and validation.
Discord mars MAS program
Despite all the good will between the General Services Administration and Multiple-Award Schedule vendors in recent years, there is plenty of ill will over the schedule's pricing and audit clauses. That GSA and MAS vendors—after years of debate—are once again at odds over the requirement that vendors offer government users their best prices and that GSA has the right to audit vendors' books brought immediate discussion at the Federation of Government Information Processing Council's recent Acquisition
BRIEFING BOOK
Joining forces. A Joint Task Force on Computer Network Defense is expected to be up and running this month. It will serve as a network monitoring center, coordinating responses to cyberattacks on Defense Department systems. The Defense Information Systems Agency will lead the task force, which will work out of DISA's headquarters in Arlington, Va. Maj. Gen. John Campbell, DISA's vice director, will oversee a staff drawn from DISA, the services, and intelligence and law enforcement
Group demos way to shop multiple e-catalogs
A coalition of government and industry groups last week demonstrated a pilot program to let agencies shop multiple online catalogs easily, securely and simultaneously. The Catalog Interoperability Pilot is a significant step in the development of ubiquitous electronic commerce because it will make it easy to compare products online, said G. Martin Wagner, associate administrator for governmentwide policy at the General Services Administration, during a presentation of the pilot last week.
GSA posts schedule sales, contract details and other buying info on Web
Flooded by Freedom of Information Act requests about Multiple-Award Schedule contracts, the General Services Administration is creating a Web site that will provide access to the details of vendors' schedule sales. The Federal Supply Service gets hundreds of FOIA requests for contractor sales information, assistant commissioner of FSS for acquisitions William N. Gormley said this month at the GCN Forum luncheon in Washington.
Agencies have more choice in buying
Telos, a software development company founded in 1968, was experiencing a midlife crisis in its government work. Wood decided the privately held company should focus on advanced messaging, database integration, information security and wireless networking. In 1995, Telos won the Army's Small Multiuser Computer II contract, through which it sells network infrastructure products and services. The previous year, the Immigration and Naturalization Service had awarded Telos the Personal Workstation Acquisition Contract.
Air Force signs with Lockheed for Microsoft products
The Air Force has signed an agreement with Lockheed Martin Corp. to provide the service with Microsoft Corp. products at discounted prices over three years. More than 300,000 Air Force users are expected to benefit from the new volume discount agreement that will be a part of Lockheed Martin's Global Combat Support System–Air Force contract.
Navy will install Xylan ATM switches aboard four ship groups
In its continuing effort to modernize its shipboard communications systems, the Navy will outfit two carrier battle groups and two amphibious-ready groups with asynchronous transfer mode LANs in the next year. The Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command this month negotiated an order with Electronic Data Systems Corp. under the company's PC LAN+ contract to provide ATM switches from Xylan Corp. of Calabasas, Calif., to serve as the communications backbones on the ships.
For your eyes only: These glasses would fit perfectly on James Bond
Move over, Mr. Bond. Sceptre Technologies Inc. of City of Industry, Calif., has invented a brand-new way to hide sensitive data in plain sight. The Invisible LCD Privacy Screen shows its secrets only to authorized users who wear special sunglasses. Everyone else just sees a white screen. Sceptre has manipulated the layers of glass and the film inside to display white noise to unauthorized viewers.
Treasury seeks smarter cards
The Treasury Department has completed a four-month Internet commerce pilot of smart cards and elliptic-curve cryptography in conjunction with the Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) specification. "It worked very well," said Gary Grippo, program manager for electronic money at Treasury's Financial Management Service. "We learned that elliptic-curve cryptography was more than 73 percent more efficient than the RSA [Data Security Inc.] mechanism."
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
ASW 1.0 is obviously what you were using on the LT. ASW 1.0 was shipped with Dragon's NaturallySpeaking 1.0 and 2.0. As you saw, even though it told you "below average," recognition and performance were fine. The categories assigned to various ranges of speech-to-noise ratios in ASW 1.0 were arbitrary—and, as Dragon saw, readings that gave perfectly fine performance but were labeled "below average" caused a good deal of unnecessary concern and stress for users.
Center records hydrologic data for forecast offices
Will it rain tomorrow? The team at the Ohio River Forecast Center has the job of supplying that information to the National Weather Service's forecast offices, which in turn issue public watches and warnings. The 52-year-old center is the oldest of the nation's 13 river forecast centers. It monitors conditions for an area of about 200,000 square miles throughout the Ohio River basin, including the Allegheny River in western New York, the Monongahela River in West Virginia and
Statistics bureau will post no data before its time
The Bureau of Labor Statistics this month decided to suspend the posting of some economic data on its Web site until it can create new posting rules. Although security was the driving force behind the decision, it is not hackers BLS is concerned about. The problem is mistakes by the bureau's own employees.
Agencies face decision on year 2000: Fix or cut bait
Federal agencies have reached a fork in the road to year 2000 readiness. The choice: either replace unready PCs and servers or upgrade them. Some agencies are using broad-brush software tools to fix their PC LANs. Others are physically checking the BIOS and real-time clock on each machine and applying up-grades and code patches where necessary.
BRIEFING BOOK
Stop the presses. The Defense Logistics Agency has hired KPMG Peat Marwick of New York to review the Defense Automated Printing Service operations with an eye toward privatization. The fiscal 1999 Defense Authorization Act mandated the independent review. DOD must submit the findings to Congress by March 31. "The study is intended to be an objective assessment of DAPS' current structure and operations, so we can have a valid and reliable database from which to make decisions
IRS will test the use of PINs as electronic signatures in two pilots for 1998returns
The IRS will run two pilots this tax season in which it will accept personal identification numbers as electronic signatures. In the first pilot, more than 8,000 approved tax preparers can let taxpayers choose PINs and use them to sign their 1998 tax returns, said Robert Barr, the IRS' assistant commissioner for electronic tax administration.
GAO eases sole-source fears
A General Accounting Office report counters widespread suggestions that the government's increased use of multiple-award contracts has resulted in too many sole-source task orders. GAO said agencies varied in their efforts to promote competition within multiple-award contracts. "Two of the six organizations we reviewed consistently obtained competition for orders under multiple-award contracts, but the remaining four did not," the report said.
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