Classifying a document? Mean what you say
Twenty years ago, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission made headlines by announcing a plan to throw into the Potomac River all the rubber stamps used by his agency. He said that this was the only effective way to eliminate the stamping of documents as confidential.
PROFESSIONAL CALENDAR
30 Innovations Award Workshop Workshop. Washington. Contact the National Partnership for Reinventing Government, attn: Pat Gould, 750 17th St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20006; tel. 301-948-4741. 1-3 Federal Wireless Users' Forum Workshop. Las Vegas. Contact Department of Defense, 9800 Savage Rd., Suite 6516, Fort Meade, Md. 20755; tel. 301-688-0292. 1-3 Revolution in Communications Conference and exposition. Ft. Gordon, Ga. Contact Armed Forces Communications & Electronics Association, 4400 Fair Lakes Court, Fairfax, Va. 22033; tel. 800-564-4220.
Compaq's fingerprint ID device gets a thumbs-up
Thanks to PCs, telephones, e-mail addresses and automated teller machines, I have accumulated more than two dozen passwords and personal identifiers that I must remember to prove who I am. So when Compaq Computer Corp. sent in its Fingerprint Identification Technology biometric device, I immediately dreamed of freedom from all the tedious password typing.
Rambus makes run at SDRAM with modules
LAS VEGAS—At the Comdex trade show, an official of Rambus Inc. of Mountain View, Calif., predicted the high-speed Rambus memory interface will eclipse synchronous dynamic RAM by 2000. Julia A. Cates, Rambus' product marketing manager, said about 500 64M Rambus modules have gone to Dell Computer Corp. for evaluation and prototyping. Each module consists of 16 64M error-correcting chips made by LG Semicon America Inc. of San Jose, Calif., on a circuit board from Kingston Technology
Census, other agencies tap NetWare for new networks
Leased servers running Novell NetWare 4.12 will populate 450 or more field offices as the Census Bureau next month begins to set up temporary LANs for the 2000 census. That and sizable government orders for NetWare 5.0, released in September, are helping Novell Inc. regain visibility in the network operating system market, Novell officials said recently.
DOD plans new Hawaiian HQ
HONOLULU—The Pacific Command is planning to build a state-of-the-art command and control headquarters at Camp Smith in Hawaii that command officials said will serve as a model for other Defense Department C2 centers in the 21st century. The command will break ground on the new headquarters in 2000 and move into the complex in 2003, said Army Brig. Gen. James Bryan, the command's director for command, control, communications and computer systems.
Agencies are told to tap existing budgets for cyberterrorism security
At least for the coming year, agencies will have to use their own funds for cyberterrorism security efforts, officials working on the Clinton administration's critical infrastructure protection initiative said. The word came just before 14 agencies were to submit vulnerability studies on Nov. 18. Eight more agencies must submit similar studies in February.
FEMA calls on president's council for more help on 2000 preparations
The Federal Emergency Management Agency needs more readiness assessments from the President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion before it can prepare an emergency response plan to handle possible year 2000 disruptions, a FEMA official said. "We have to plan for the unknown at all times," said Lacy Suitor, FEMA's executive associate director for response and recovery. "We need the assessments."
IG tells Navy to conform with frequency regs
HONOLULU—The Pacific Command is one of the Defense Department's worst offenders in failing to coordinate frequency spectrum operations with allied nations, according to a recent DOD inspector general report. Because PACOM's systems do not conform with international agreements involving the frequency spectrum, its DOD systems may interfere with the systems of other foreign governments in the Pacific, the IG said in its report, Coordination of Electromagnetic Frequency Spectrum and International Telecommunications Agreements [GCN, Nov. 9. Page
Win 2000 server bigger than it is better
Windows 2000 Server, Beta 2 Pros and cons: Microsoft Windows 2000 is coming at us like a slow-motion unstoppable avalanche. From the desk to the server room and on to the data center, Win 2000 threatens to cover everything. Will this be a new era in computing or a megaflop? As the GCN Lab discovered, in the server arena it will depend on an agency's
At 333 MHz, Celeron chip gives low-end Compaq PC some gusto
Pros and cons: + Solid, basic PC performance + Compact chassis – No monitor or CD-ROM drive at this price Intel Corp.'s Celeron processor, a stripped-down Pentium II, never made it to the GCN Lab in its original 266- and 300-MHz versions because most computer makers had already found its performance inferior.
Crash Defender program does no harm and protects system without much annoyance
Box Score B Quarterdeck Corp. released Crash Defender Deluxe just before its acquisition by Symantec Corp. of Cupertino, Calif. Symantec is building the underlying technology into its Norton Utilities package. But you can still buy Crash Defender Deluxe from Quarterdeck. In my experience, most such programs have wound up doing a lot more harm than good.
Boeing drops its protest of Seat Management
Boeing Information Services Inc. is giving up its effort to win a General Services Administration Seat Management contract and dropping its protest. Boeing passed up the option of taking its protest of GSA Federal Technology Service's Seat Management Program contracts to the General Accounting Office. The deadline for filing a protest with GAO passed late last month. Boeing of Vienna, Va., filed an agency-level protest of GSA's Seat Management contracts in July.
PCs that go into battle will be tougher, lighter, Army says
BEDFORD, Mass.—The Army plans to field a leaner, more cost-effective computer for the digitized battlefield of the 21st century. The Army will save a lot of money by equipping the service's first digital division with PCs running Microsoft Windows NT instead of expensive, high-end workstations running Unix, Brig. Gen. Steven Boutelle, the Army's program executive officer for command, control and communications systems, said at the Militray Communications '98 conference late last month.
Reseller CS&T adds services to IT Schedule deal
Reseller Corporate Software & Technology Inc. has added software services to its General Services Administration Information Technology Schedule contract. The Norwood, Mass., company will provide custom application development, installation, electronic commerce, technology migration and other services on its contract. The 300-employee company has sold software to agencies through GSA schedule contracts since 1995, under the names Corporate Software Inc. and Stream International Inc. It has a Web site at http://www.corpsoft.com.
Treasury sets up BPAs for companies competing with Dell
The Treasury Department last month signed three blanket purchasing agreements for file servers, laser printers, PCs, routers and software, in deals that set up competition for its heavyweight supplier, Dell Computer Corp. Under the Treasury Department Acquisition BPAs, Presidio Corp. of Lanham, Md., will provide IBM Corp. portables, PCs and servers, and Government Technology Services Inc. of Chantilly, Va., will sell the same types of products from Compaq Computer Corp., IRS contracting officer Greg Roseman said.
The war over rewritable DVD standards heats up
Digital video disk technology has made few inroads into the drive market, and vendors are already hawking rewritable versions: DVD-RAM drives. It sounds great—big storage and rewritable. But a split among makers could leave buyers with incompatible rewritable DVD formats. As with any new medium, standards among the major manufacturers must be established. For the most part, standards for the DVD-ROM are set, but such is not the case for rewritable DVD. The biggest bone of contention
Apple's iMac rates high on cool scale but has built-in limitations
Pros and cons: + Good 3-D rendering + Very easy setup – No floppy drive – No upgrade path The iMac is the coolest-looking computer I've ever seen. As soon as I set up Apple Computer Inc.'s latest model in the GCN Lab, visitors started dropping by with lame excuses and asking casually if they could play with the iMac.
IG: Defense buying systems from vendors not certified 2000-ready
Military services are buying major weapons systems from vendors not required to deliver year 2000-ready products, the Defense Department inspector general reported last month. The IG reviewed 16 DOD weapons systems and found that nine programs had contracts or solicitations that did not include language about year 2000 readiness. The Federal Acquisition Regulation requires agencies buying hardware and software to ensure that contracts and solicitations demand that products be year 2000-ready.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
David J. Shea Chief, Procurement Policy Division Agriculture Department Washington I'd like to thank Bob Gellman for his @info.policy column on long-term access to government information [GCN, Oct. 12, Page 22]. But I also want to respond to a question he raised about the involvement of the Government Printing Office in the partnership agreement between the State Department and the University of Illinois Chicago.
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