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.
Gore proposes an Electronic Bill of Rights to protect the privacy of personal data
Vice President Gore last month announced steps to create an Electronic Bill of Rights to protect citizen privacy in an increasingly electronic world. The administration plans to discuss its plans with state and local governments to find a balance among the protection of personal information collected by governments, the right of access to public records and First Amendment protections.
Navy to build net infrastructure in Tidewater area
The Navy has placed an order with Lucent Technologies Inc. to build a metropolitan area network in Norfolk, Va., under the $2.9 billion Voice, Video and Data program. Ultimately, the Navy would like the MAN to give Army, Navy and Air Force installations a single infrastructure for voice and data services in what the Defense Department calls the Tidewater region.
Sun pushes parity pricing with vendors
Sun Microsystems Inc. has enlisted nearly three dozen Solaris enterprise tool vendors in a price-parity program to compete with Microsoft Corp. The independent software developers have agreed to price their application development, middleware and systems management tools the same for the Solaris and the Windows NT operating systems on Sun Ultra 5 and Ultra 10 workstations.
Workers at GSA come one step closer to new, agencywide e-mail
Lotus Domino Mail Server should be running by the end of December, Herdt said. General Services Administration officials last month expanded their Lotus cc:Mail migration pilot from 20 employees of the chief information officer at headquarters to an additional 30 workers in Arlington, Va., and Boston.
Diskeeper cuts backup time for network at Sandia labs
When Bob Foster wanted to cut his backup time for a 30G RAID data set, he used Diskeeper for Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0. The disk defragmenter package from Executive Software Inc. of Glendale, Calif., shortened backup time for a Digital Equipment Corp. 2100 server with a 190-MHz Alpha processor and 128M of RAM. It condensed the stored files that had become scattered across disks.
FAA faces congressional criticism on status of agency's date code fixes
FAA has budgeted enough money to finish date code fixes, Ray Long, the agency's year 2000 project director, says. Federal Aviation Administration officials this month had to defend their year 2000 progress at a hearing of the House Science Subcommittee on Technology. FAA administrator Jane Garvey late last month said that FAA had fixed date code in 67 percent of its mission-critical systems and would have its systems ready by 2000.
This suite tool makes it a snap to prepare glitzy presentations
These tips will help you draw conclusions If your graphics needs are small, your office suite might have the right tools. Before upgrading hardware to accommodate new software, check to see if old versions running under Windows 3.x are available. Leave the high-end products to the pros. They require lots of time to learn before they give you good results. If you have a pro doing your in-house graphics, don't restrict him
DOD revs simulation models
Government designers of simulation models still work in stovepiped groups that are only beginning to face reuse and interoperability issues. Defense Department groups soon will have no choice about interoperability. Beginning Oct. 1, DOD organizations will get no funding for simulations that cannot or will not comply two years from now with the department's High-Level Architecture standard for simulations.
FTS takes command of federal security hotline
The General Services Administration has chosen Carnegie Mellon University's Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center to staff a government computer security hotline. The Pittsburgh CERT, together with the Energy Department's Computer Incident Advisory Capability group, has been handling the hotline under a two-year Federal Computer Incident Response Capability pilot. A FEDCIRC Management Center will be set up within FTS' Office of Information Security, said Judith Spencer, director of the office's Center for Governmentwide Security.
Risk Manager can assess an agency's year 2000 preparedness and survivalchances
Managers can monitor their agencies' year 2000 survival chances with Risk Manager for Year 2000, a Microsoft Windows 9x and Windows NT package from GartnerGroup Inc. of Stamford, Conn. Risk Manager does not diagnose, fix or test any date code. Instead, the $19,000 standalone application presents lengthy checklists to measure a senior manager's knowledge of readiness in six areas: information technology infrastructure, facilities and equipment, supply chain, products and services, applications and procedures, and process systems.
AF sees push-pull apps as threat and keeps ban
Lt. Gen. William Donahue says push-pull applications consume bandwidth and threaten security. The Air Force's ban on push-pull applications will remain in effect indefinitely, the service's director of communications and information has decided. Concerned about potential security threats to Air Force networks, the service ordered the ban late last year. The threat still exists, and the applications put too much demand on limited bandwidth, said Lt. Gen. William Donahue.
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