GSA pushes Seat Management
The General Services Administration is launching an all-out marketing push for its Seat Management Program. "We will do whatever it takes to sell this concept," said Charles Self, assistant commissioner for information technology integration at GSA's Federal Technology Service, during a speech at a Federal Sources Inc. monthly breakfast meeting in McLean, Va. "There is some confusion today. That is our challenge—to unconfuse."
NOAA duo create hurricane readers
MIAMI—Joe Griffin and James Franklin do not work with big systems, big budgets or big computer issues in the federal government. But they are responsible for a computer system that is expected to have a big scientific and economic impact. For their collaboration on development of a new data gathering and analysis system, the duo last year received the Bronze Medal from the Commerce Department.
Call-management product maker will push wares in federal market
Rockwell Electronic Commerce will form a federal sales group in Vienna, Va., to increase visibility for its flagship line of Spectrum call-center products. "We haven't been addressing the federal market," said Rich Buchanan, East Coast regional director for the Wood Dale, Ill., business unit of Rockwell International Corp. Rockwell EC demonstrated its Transcend call-management software at the CTI Expo trade show in Baltimore last month. Using the same software as Rockwell's Spectrum Automatic Call Distributor, Transcend runs
Dell Precision 610 zips along at Xeon speeds
Pros and cons: + Extraordinary performance – Noisy SCSI drive GCNdex scores: 400-MHz Precision 610 Average 400-MHz Pentium II Floating-point math 9.10 8.65 Integer math 16.39 16.02 Video 28.14 21.78 Small-file access 10.19 11.22 Large-file access 8.76 9.44 CD-ROM access 20.70 N/A
Services duplicate telecom efforts, GAO says
The Army, Navy, Air Force and Defense Department agencies continue to run long-haul networks that undercut the Defense Information Systems Network, the General Accounting Office concluded in a recent report. The report, Defense Networks: Management Information Shortfalls Hinder Defense Efforts to Meet DISN Goals, said that networks operated by the services and DOD agencies continue to exist without the Defense Information Systems Agency's knowledge.
Archiving data requires long-term view
Although agencies are creating more and more electronic archives, Grajewski said he does not expect the National Archives and Records Administration to specify a particular architecture or format for the files. Grajewski joined SMS in 1983 after working as a certified public accountant for Arthur Andersen & Co. and Deloitte & Touche LLP. He received a bachelor's degree in business administration from Georgetown University.
Lee confirmed as OFPP head
The Office of Federal Procurement Policy officially has a new administrator. The Senate approved the nomination of Deidre A. Lee last month. The Office of Management and Budget job had been vacant for 11 months, since Steven Kelman left the post to return to Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.
No turn's too tight for Guard
Every day about 350 vessels visit the Port of Houston, one of the nation's busiest ports. "They have a lot of dangerous traffic," said Lt. Mike Johnston, an engineer for the Coast Guard's Shore-based Systems Engineering Branch. The port's service area includes not only Houston and Galveston, Texas, but also Texas City, the nation's busiest petrochemical port for container loads of hazardous chemicals. The 54 nautical miles of channel are narrow and winding, making travel risky.
GSA's information systems integrator fears no revision
FALLS CHURCH, Va.—Elizabeth Wilkinson is at the gym by 5 a.m. most mornings, lifting weights. Then she goes to her office and flexes her systems muscle. She is the information systems integrator for the Office of Information Technology Integration (ITI) in the General Services Administration's Federal Technology Service. Her systems charge is complex. Like most federal IT managers, Wilkinson develops and maintains systems for her office. But that office also happens to sell IT support services and
Contracting officials focus on price, configuration before buying online
Who's buying online and what are they looking for? So far, federal contracting officers seem to be using Web sites primarily for configuration and price information. A few are making small buys from vendor sites. "I want to go to a Web site that's easy to use and has a powerful search engine that doesn't reject my query," said Francis X. Duggan Jr., contract specialist at the Naval Sea Logistics Center in Mechanicsburg, Pa.
Justice seeks review of Microsoft source code
The Justice Department and state attorneys general have demanded a close look at Microsoft Windows 95 and Windows 98 source code. Justice and state lawyers filed the motion this month following a July 30 ruling by the U.S. District Court for Utah that ordered Microsoft Corp. to turn over the source code to antitrust plaintiff Caldera Inc. of Orem, Utah.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Call or write to the appropriate editor In your story "Software glitches leave Navy Smart Ship dead in the water" [GCN, July 13, Page 1], there are several errors of a technical nature to which I feel compelled to respond. Primarily, the statement "blame it on the OS" reaches an entirely specious conclusion. For example, Anthony DiGiorgio states that a $2.95 calculator gives you a zero when you try to divide a number by zero.
It's easy to see that Vortex is frustrating to read
Pros and cons: + Very large text display + Works with most word processors – Unusual text delivery method Real-life requirements: Win95 or NT Tenax Software Engineering bills Vortex IV as the greatest advance in reading since the stone tablet. But I suspect even Cro-Magnons would go back to their cave drawings after a few minutes with this flashy but frustrating program.
Air Force's DMS base rollout reaches halfway point
The Air Force is almost halfway to its goal of setting up Defense Message System sites at 92 active-duty bases worldwide by 2000, an Air Force official said. The service will have Defense Message System sites up and running at 35 locations in the United States, four bases in Europe and six bases in the Pacific by the end of the month, Air Force officials said.
To master your e-mail, make sure your server has the right settings
This is the summer practically every agency is upgrading mail servers. Many users are just discovering fancy new e-mail options and mailing unreadable messages. Last issue's column discussed ways to merge address books and store messages from multiple mail accounts. Now let's take a look at two e-mail transmission problems on the rise.
Adobe PageMill 3.0 is an inexpensive way to build Web pages
Pros and cons: + Easy for making complex Web pages with frames, forms, tables, sound, Java and ActiveX controls + Entire-site view from your local hard drive – Upload functions not compatible with all FTP servers – Most documentation in PDF Real-life requirements: Win95 or NT 4.0 or later with 24M RAM for NT, 20M free on hard drive, CD-ROM drive, Internet connection
Military has smart-card idea in store for recruits
To automate payroll and registration for recruits, the Financial Management Service and the Defense Finance and Accounting Service are issuing smart cards to recruits at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas. The Lackland program kicks off a militarywide initiative. The Defense Department plans to eliminate checks and cash as the chief payment methods for recruits at Army, Navy and Air Force training posts, said Gary Grippo, FMS program manger for electronic money.
Agriculture division monitors investment portfolio via intranet
A new intranet in the Agriculture Department's Rural Development Division lets employees research rural community investments online instead of sifting through boxes of computer printouts or tracking down information on the phone. "Prior to the intranet, questions such as 'What were Rural Development's investments in 1997 for the Mississippi Delta region?' required weeks of data gathering and analysis, and yielded answers with an 80 percent accuracy rate," said Kathleen Jackson, a Rural Development computer specialist. "Now,
Ubiquitous effort helps handle job
BOSTON—We live in a world filled with increasingly complex technology that we take for granted. That is, until we're faced with an unresponsive PC, printer or modem. Then, finding someone who understands the problem can be the hardest part of the repair process. But for folks at the General Services Administration's Boston office know just the man to call.
Warfighting systems get a once-over during JWID
SUFFOLK, Va.—The sign in the lobby of the Joint Training, Analysis and Simulation Center here said it all: "Warning! All Portable Computers and Diskettes Brought Into the Center Must Be Virus-Scanned And Marked." As visitors entered the facility, security guards at the front desk used a scanning station to enforce the edict.
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