GSA tells agencies: Boost privacy measures on Web sites
GSA recommends privacy guidelines Stay up-to-date on Web technology changes and their effect on privacy. Notify the public whenever you are collecting data on the Internet. Use information only for the sole purpose for which it was gathered and as was disclosed in the privacy notice. Protect privacy in all forms of data, including text, graphics, sound and video. Balance Freedom of Information Act and Privacy Act requirements.
GAO: Beware data exchanges
Bad date code in government systems seems less a threat come 2000 than flawed data that agencies might receive from other government and private-sector systems, the General Accounting Office reported last week. In its report, Year 2000 Computing Crisis: Actions Needed on Electronic Data Exchanges, GAO warned that some mission-critical systems may not be ready if federal agencies don't agree on date formats with all their data exchange partners.
Transportation, VA award pacts to test networks
The Veterans Affairs Department's Health Administration Center and the Transportation Department's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recently awarded System Resources Corp. of Burlington, Mass., contracts to evaluate their systems and recommend year 2000 solutions. SRC's contracts with both agencies involve test planning, testing, independent validation and verification activities, said Ralph Williams, SRC spokesman.
With Mozart, Army scores update of a big '60s-era business system
The Army is putting a modern face on one of the world's largest and oldest integrated business systems. The service is modernizing its Commodity Command Standard System, a big job by any measure, Army officials said. CCSS, managed by the Army Materiel Command's Logistics Systems Support Center in St. Louis, consists of more than 561 subsystems and 5,000 programs running 10.2 million lines of code, not to mention 20,000 PCs.
Know HTML? Use HomeSite for text editing
Whether you want a straightforward Hypertext Markup Language text editor or a combination text and what-you-see-is-what-you-get Web authoring package, Allaire LLC of Cambridge, Mass., has a tool for you. The company's HomeSite 3.0 is a top-quality HTML text editor that runs under Microsoft Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0. You can't get closer to the code in any other editor.
FAA will not meet OMB's final date code deadline
The Federal Aviation Administration beat its own deadline for fixing date code on some mission-critical systems, but FAA expects that it won't make the Clinton administration's deadline for finishing year 2000 work. FAA had set a July 30 deadline for fixing date code work in 60 percent of its mission-critical systems.
Congressional funding for FOIA would backfire
Are agencies complying with the Electronic Freedom of Information Act Amendments of 1996? The critics don't think so, and they want Congress to turn up the heat—even if some recommendations are misguided. Regular readers of GCN already know about a recent OMB Watch report, which found agency compliance to be overwhelmingly inadequate. Only a few agencies have embraced E-FOIA and the opportunity to make information publicly available on the Web.
Hackers, feds say govt. net security stinks
LAS VEGAS—Hackers and feds faced off at the Black Hat Briefings last month but also found they had something in common: a lack of respect for the government's network security tactics. "In general, we don't have a clue what the threat is and what ought to be done about it," said a Defense Department employee who identified himself only as Ken.
SNEAKER.NET
Q. Every time I dial a computer bulletin board system, Internet provider or some other online service, I never get a 56-Kbps connection, even though I use a 56-Kbps modem and am dialing into a 56-Kbps service. Sometimes I get 33.6-Kbps connections, but usually it's 28.8 Kbps. Why? A. If you must dial one digit to get an outside line, you're going through a private branch exchange phone system, which performs a digital-to-analog conversion and drops
Look hard and you will find a way to eliminate PC data storage trouble
Does your multigigabyte hard drive seem a bit crowded these days, despite regular dumping of what you sincerely hope were unnecessary files? Join the crowd. I remember when a 10M PC-XT drive seemed huge. Now my 10G drive fills up so fast I have to purge old files every month. A stack of 5G Travan backup tapes stands where I used to stack 1.44M floppies.
FMSS Schedule vendors resist shift to IT Schedule
Financial Management System Software Schedule contract holders are fighting plans to consolidate the mandatory financial systems schedule into the broader Information Technology Schedule. The General Services Administration is expected to shift the administration of FMSS Schedule contracts from the Federal Technology Service to the Federal Supply Service. As part of the change, use of the financial systems product contracts would no longer be mandatory, federal officials said.
Guard picks scalable servers
The National Guard recently chose servers to house the data for its nationwide distance-learning network. The Guard will install the 300-MHz Media Engine servers from Removable Media Solutions Inc. of Rancho Cordova, Calif., in Distributed Training Technology Project classrooms, at the network hub and at a hot site, said Lt. Col. Philip Vermeer, DTT product manager.
Sprint challenges DISA's choice of private ATM net
The Defense Information Systems Agency is committed to building a private asynchronous transfer mode backbone for the Defense Information Systems Network. But one major telecommunications carrier is trying to persuade DISA to use public ATM services to meet its DISN requirements. Sprint Corp. hired Data Systems Analysts Inc. of Fairfax, Va., to review the Defense Department's ATM security. The 82-page technical report challenges the DISA view that public ATM networks are more vulnerable to security threats
Navy buys 3Com switches to build IT-21 ATM backbones for East and West coasts
The Navy has ordered two networks from 3Com Corp. of Santa Clara, Calif., for its Information Technology for the 21st Century program. The ashore networks will create asynchronous transfer mode backbones for Navy organizations on the East and West coasts. The Navy's postgraduate school in Monterey, Calif., and the Naval Depot in Jacksonville, Fla., are each building networks using 3Com's CoreBuilder 7000HD ATM switch.
XML promises to transform government's use of the Web
Government information managers and commercial application developers alike are buzzing about the Extensible Markup Language, which tags nontext Web content for easier searching and delivery. "This is one of the rare technologies that all the big players, who tend to disagree on most everything else, are in favor of," said Charles F. Goldfarb, the Standard Generalized Markup Language's chief inventor. "XML is mass-market SGML."
Microsoft's specs development procedures cause DISA advisers to say no to DCOM
Microsoft Corp. operating systems may be low-cost and easy to use, but they fall short of Defense Department requirements for openness, said Terry Bollinger, principal information systems engineer for Mitre Corp. of Bedford, Mass. Bollinger, a technical adviser to the Defense Information Systems Agency, said Microsoft's closed procedures for developing technical specifications led him and other DOD technical advisers to recommend against deploying battlefield applications that rely on Microsoft's Distributed Component Object Model definitions.
NASA gives out high fives for software
Software that will remotely control International Space Station experiments via the Internet and improve air traffic control won NASA's 1998 Software of the Year awards. Tempest is an easy-to-install, fully documented program that lets users run experiments using standard Web browsers, NASA chief information officer Lee B. Holcomb said. A NASA study concluded Web remote-control applications will proliferate in the automotive, consumer electronics, office products and medical industries.
Lack of client management tools sinks Kayak XA-s
Pros and cons: + Great benchmark performance – No client management or other tools Average XA-s 400-MHz Kayak Pentium II Floating-point math 8.83 8.65 Integer math 16.08 16.02 2-D video 28.08 21.78 Small-file access 16.17 11.22 Large-file access 9.98 9.44 CD-ROM access 18.85 N/A 1.0=66MHz6 486 baseline
Leasing looks better and better for agencies
A decade ago, leasing was a popular way for the government to get computer hardware and software. In fact, people often forget that when computing was all mainframe host-and-terminal setups, processors were routinely leased with their operating systems. When, in the 1980s, IBM Corp. converted most of its leases to buys, it seemed to be the end of an era.
Web site designs get personal
Web site design has been largely an anything-goes affair. But Internet analysts predict that successful government Web sites of the future will give each visitor a personalized experience tailored to a specific need. "Catch-as-catch-can design, massive start-from-scratch overhauls, and a hodgepodge of features and information are no longer valid," said Paul R. Hagen, an Internet analyst at Forrester Research Inc. of Cambridge, Mass.
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