Dog tags get digital test drive
The Army this month completed testing on seven digital dog tag prototypes designed to carry a soldier's medical history into the battlefield. One of the products could be distributed to all Defense Department personnel and their dependents, service officials said. The 60-day test, which began June 15 at the Electronic Proving Ground in Fort Huachuca, Ariz., was designed to measure the performance of the devices against extreme heat, humidity and freezing temperatures, as well as vibration, shock,
High-end desktop tool is low on accurate feedback
Pros and cons: + Powerful text tools – Output not WYSIWYG Real-life requirements: Windows 9x or Windows NT, Pentium Pro or Pentium II processor, 64M RAM, 25M free on hard drive; Mac requirements not tested Almost five years ago, I installed QuarkXPress 3.0 on a brand-new Apple Power Macintosh. It seemed gloriously faster than the desktop publisher I had been using on an old Classic Mac.
Agencies face winding road to EC, digital signatures
If Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) has her way, federal agencies are in for a major change in lifestyle. Eshoo represents Silicon Valley in more ways than one. Her bill, the Electronic Commerce Enhancement Act, HR 2991, mandates electronic forms and digital signatures for applications and communications with federal agencies. For harried information technology managers, passage of the bill would be a mixed blessing. True, we would get a charter to implement modern technology over the objections
DOD COMPUTINGBRIEFING BOOK
Backup telecom. Diane Fountaine, the Defense Information System Agency's deputy manager of the National Communications System, told Congress late last month that the nation's emergency telecommunications infrastructure will suffer little or no interruption come 2000. Just the same, DISA is putting contingency plans in place, Fountaine said. NCS, which DISA manages, is an affiliation of 23 federal agencies that maintains the emergency comm infrastructure.
Site licenses change way agencies buy, use software
Grady Tucker remembers the old days when agencies would order one shrink-wrapped copy of each software application for each PC. "Resellers would ship the pallets of thousands of software boxes, and the government would store all the manuals and diskettes in warehouses,'' said Tucker, a manufacturer's representative in Gaithersburg, Md. Times have changed. Site licensing, CD-ROM and remote distribution, combined with online manuals, have streamlined software buys and earned agencies big discounts.
Graphics software
More and more images are appearing in agency documents and presentations and on Web sites—and for many reasons: the demands of a more visually sophisticated audience, low-cost high-resolution color printers and flexible, feature-full graphics software. Agency publications managers find that images are easy to include, enhance their products and make information a lot easier for their readers to apprehend. This buyers guide is an overview of presentation, paint and draw programs, and some business graphics applications,
State Web site gathers tips on embassy blasts
The State Department is using the Web to gather tips about the recent bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa. A special agent with the Diplomatic Security Service said State officials hope the site will encourage anyone with information about the parties responsible for the bombings to contact the department. "Leads are coming in from all over the world," said the agent, who asked not to named. "We're looking into all leads or passing them on to
Packages help create art for Web pages
Users who only occasionally create Web graphics will like Ulead PhotoImpact the best. High on everyone's hate list is the Program Shuffle. The shuffle keeps Web graphics designers doing constant calisthenics. It goes something like this: Create text along a path in Adobe Illustrator. Import it into Adobe Photoshop. Whoops, not quite right, go back to Illustrator.
Government buying is moving, shaking
GORMLEY: Sales last year for IT were $2.8 billion and this year through May 22 are $3.2 billion. We feel we're probably going to do at least $4 billion in sales this year. I think what we're seeing is that while we increased buying by about a $1 billion last year, we're seeing that the addition of services to the IT Schedule is starting to really kick in.
Services try out cargo ID technology that would boost logistics operations
The U.S. Transportation Command is testing four automated identification technology prototypes to improve the data flow, timeliness, accuracy and reliability of its logistics operations. The tests began last month and will run through October, Gen. Walter Kross said. The former USTRANSCOM commander spoke at a June Freight Identification Technology Strategies Workshop in Reston, Va.
Tight-lipped Justice starts hardware, software rollout of JCON II
Justice wants to position itself to take advantage of new technologies, deputy CIO Mark Boster says. The Justice Department has brought up the first 700 PCs and 12 servers on the new Justice Consolidated Office Automation Network, but Justice officials are saying little else about the replacement for current office automation systems.
HP touts VirtualVault as the EC platform for feds
Hewlett-Packard Co. is eyeing a new market for its VirtualVault operating system: federal agencies that want to run electronic government and electronic commerce applications on the Web. A Hewlett-Packard official said he expects federal users to discover a killer app among the potentially unlimited electronic government and EC applications for the B1-level secure operating system.Andy Suchoski, security consultant with Hewlett-Packard's electronic business software organization, said the trusted platform works by securing Internet gateway applications from standard
Lawyers pay close attention to IT happenings
You'd be surprised how much interest federal information technology issues raise among members of the American Bar Association. I know because I just got back from the ABA summer convention in Toronto. The ABA is the largest voluntary bar association in the United States, and every summer, nearly 15,000 lawyers and their families descend on some North American city with enough hotel rooms and expense account restaurants to accommodate the crowd.
Senate committee OKs bill requiring online forms
The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee approved a bill late last month that would require federal agencies to put most of their forms online within 18 months. The Government Paperwork Elimination Act, S 2107, also would require federal agencies within five years to accept electronic payments and to treat digital signatures as legally valid. The IRS, however, would be exempt from the bill.
Bullish on reforms
Change usually results in someone's ox getting gored. For the information technology community, procurement reform is like wave after wave of stampeding bulls—with horns. Picture the Merrill Lynch TV ads from the late '70s. The latest howling comes from vendors on the General Services Administration's Financial Management System Software Schedule. GSA wants to fold the mandatory contracts into the great unwashed masses of regular, nonmandatory IT Schedule contracts. The plan to collapse FMSS into the IT Schedule
NASA network blasts off with Fast Ethernet
NASA's space shuttle fleet managers have upgraded their network at Johnson Space Center in Houston to a Fast Ethernet backbone with switched Ethernet to desktop systems. "We came off a 10-Mbps shared network, so this is much better," said Joe Capps, manager of network and desktop services for the United Space Alliance, or USA.
rat
The Web has plenty for the Rat and other information warriors to hate. Each week, some new bandwidth-sucking attraction pops up: a dancing baby, an online gambling den, some other form of electronic debauchery to waste users' browsing time. Now the Rat has found a whole new subtle and insidious reason to hate the Web. What's with these free e-mail accounts?
Banyan Vines networks flourish in federal gardens
The Marine Corps is moving away from its longtime network partnership with Banyan Systems Inc. and migrating to Microsoft Windows NT Server, said Greg Edwards, federal sales manager for the Westborough, Mass., networking company. But Banyan's ties to other federal organizations are growing. The Treasury Department's Office of the Comptroller uses Banyan consulting engineers to migrate from Banyan Vines to a StreetTalk for NT network, he said.
Cohen: Fix date code or I'll halt new app efforts
Defense's William Cohen says DOD will study military progress in November and December. Defense Secretary William Cohen this month threatened to suspend software development in the military if the services do not repair date code quickly enough. In a Aug. 7 memorandum to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the services and Defense Department agencies, Cohen said he would impose a software development moratorium if DOD fails to make sufficient year 2000
Agency vows to be 2000-ready
Date code problems could cripple the health care system by delaying reimbursement payments, Sen. Robert Bennett says. The Health Care Financing Administration last month tried to reassure lawmakers that its systems will be ready for the year 2000, despite the daunting task facing the agency.
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