Border Patrol agents, working in desert and other remote areas, test portable PCs
The Immigration and Naturalization Service is testing portable computer systems to help Border Patrol agents do fingerprint identification and voice data entry. The lightweight systems have ruggedized cases for temperature extremes and rough treatment in the desert. About 8,000 Border Patrol agents make more than 1 million apprehensions each year, said Fernanda Young, INS assistant commissioner in the Data Systems Division. Agents patrol 8,000 miles of international boundaries by aircraft, boat and vehicle, on horseback and on
JCALS turns to VPNs as way to serve remote users
Challenged with providing secure transmission among more than 240 Joint Continuous Acquisition and Lifecycle Support WAN sites, JCALS prime contractor Computer Sciences Corp. investigated the types of virtual private networks available. JCALS was established jointly by the Defense Department and the Defense Logistics Agency in 1991 to link disparate automated systems at military sites across the United States through a combination of LAN and WAN connections. The connections are designed to let users access, move and
Toshiba takes the plunge and manufactures departmental and workgroup PC servers
All Toshiba servers will have year 2000-ready Phoenix 4.0 BIOSes. The Computer Systems Division of Toshiba America Information Systems Inc. will move into full-line computer manufacturing this summer when it delivers its first departmental and workgroup PC servers for the U.S. market. The two-way 350- and 400-MHz Pentium II servers will have hot-swap drive bays and optional Intelligent Input/Output RAID storage drives. An I2O PCI slot supports direct throughput from the
Marines face challenge of moving older systems from Vines to NT
Maj. John R. Burnette remembers when the Marine Corps' 10-year enterprise network partnership with Banyan Systems Inc. started to come apart. Burnette, who had backed Banyan Vines and StreetTalk messaging for more than a decade, said an enterprising programmer in Okinawa wrote a routine that converted the Marines' StreetTalk global directory into an export file that worked fine under Microsoft Exchange Server.
DOD begins certifying records management apps
The Defense Department has certified two products under its records management standard and could certify several others in the next few months, a DOD official said. The standard, known as DOD 5015.2-STD, lists the specifications for a product to be certified for use within DOD. The National Archives and Records Administration is considering recommending the DOD standard for governmentwide use [GCN, Feb. 23, Page 57].
Army plans $15b assault
Army will spend big on digitization Fiscal 1999: $2.6 billion Fiscal 2000: $2.9 billion Fiscal 2001: $2.9 billion Fiscal 2002: $3.1 billion Fiscal 2003: $3.1 billion The Army has unveiled a five-year plan to spend nearly $15 billion to digitize battlefield operations.
FSS requests proposals for support services contract worth $4.7 billion
The General Services Administration's Federal Supply Service has issued a request for proposals for a variety of information technology support services for the western United States. The solicitation is called the Applications 'N Support for Widely Diverse End-User Requirements (ANSWER). It includes requirements and design research, analysis and definition, system development, software maintenance, and facilities management support services for business, scientific and engineering applications.
PROFESSIONAL CALENDAR
10-12 Information Systems Auditing Seminar. Chicago. Contact Michael I. Sobol Training Institute, 498 Concord St., Framingham, Mass. 01702; tel. 508-879-7999. 24-26 Managing Information Security Programs Seminar. New York. Contact Michael I. Sobol Training Institute, 498 Concord St., Framingham, Mass. 01702; tel. 508-879-7999. 28 Management Problems of Technical People in Leadership Roles Seminar. Washington. Contact Fred Pryor Seminars, P.O. Box 2951, Shawnee Mission, Kan. 66201; tel. 800-255-6139.
PRODUCT REVIEWS - Report Card| GCN
Firewall-1 HeatSeeker Pro Guardian Eagle NT BorderWare Proxy Server Overall B B B B B B C Remote administration A *C A *A B A N/A Access control B A B A B A B Logging D C C C C C F FTP traffic in Mbps 22.8 42.2 91.4 51.0 33.2 51.3 61.1 HTTP traffic in Mbps 50.1
Honest-to-goodness increases in CD-ROM drive speeds are near
CD-ROM technology is the subject of two books I've written, and I rely on it for much of my research, archiving and backup. So heed what I say: 24X, 32X and other variable-rate CD-ROM drives are hardly any faster than a single-speed 8X drive. They achieve peak performance over only a tiny portion of the 550M disk media.
SNEAKER.NET
Q. Some users say Microsoft Windows 98 is just an upgrade to Windows 95. Is that right? A. It's a good analogy. Win98 is to Win95 as Windows 3.1 was to Windows 3.0. If you're already running Windows 98, go to the Control Panel and double-click on the System icon. You'll see the words "Microsoft Windows 98 4.10.1998." Sounds to me like a long-winded way of calling it Windows 4.1.
Firewalls for NT survive tough battering
"NSTL bombarded seven top-selling NT firewalls with nearly 300 forms of attack and found no significant security loopholes." Related pages: Report Card A late entry in firewall assessment gets kudos for performance, speed. Every network manager worries about security, not just to keep out hackers but to keep erroneous information from flowing through the network.
Users say shift to FTS 2001 won't be a walk in the park
FTS' Sandra Bates is optimistic about the transition from FTS 2000 to FTS 2001, which, she says, might start in March. The good news about the FTS 2001 long-distance telecommunications buy is that it is still set for an October award, the Federal Technology Service's Sandra N. Bates said this month.
CIO Council will slowly take over IRMCO
The Chief Information Officers Council will co-sponsor the Interagency Resources Management Conference in Virginia Beach, Va., in the fall. The council decided to jointly manage IRMCO with the General Services Administration, which has run the conference for many years. The council will slowly merge IRMCO into a CIO Council event. As part of the co-sponsorship, agency CIOs will hold discussion panels.
Convergence of voice and data as IP services signals end of separate nets
Separate networks for voice and data will become extinct as voice traffic moves onto IP networks, telephone industry executives told a gathering of federal officials last week. "Voice is an application on the data network," said John T. Curran, chief technical officer for GTE Corp.'s Internetworking Division. But that does not mean it will be free, as voice-over-IP developers have claimed, he said.
Hello darlin'—you look great - DOD COMPUTING
The videophones, which cost about $400 each, use analog voice signals on traditional lines. Being separated from the family—it's a soldier's age-old lament. But the Air Force has found a way to unite soldiers and their families using full-color video technology. The service is using videophones at 22 air bases in Europe, including Bosnia-Herzegovina, to let service members see and speak with their families around the globe using standard telephone lines
SSA again tests PEBES for Web accessibility
The system won't be reinstated until SSA is sure it will provide the best service, SSA's Cheezum said. The Social Security Administration still wants to give citizens access to their Personal Earnings and Benefit Estimate Statements via an interactive Web site. "We're continuing to test and evaluate the PEBES system," SSA spokeswoman Carolyn Cheezum said.
Justice awards contract for automated debt collection program
The contract, awarded by Justice's Office of Debt Collection Management, will help the office better coordinate thousands of collection cases nationwide. ODCM supports lawsuits Justice brings against companies and individuals that owe money to the federal government. The contract has a base term of 28 months and five one-year options. It has a fixed-price component and task orders.
Agriculture and U.S. Bank discuss recent IMPAC service delay issues
To prevent interruptions to its IMPAC service such as those that occurred during the past month, the Agriculture Department has agreed to work more closely with its card provider, U.S. Bank of Minneapolis. Agriculture and U.S. Bank officials recently met in Minneapolis to discuss the service halts that occurred on two days last month and one day this month.
Black Hawk pilots, mechanics stay informed via online program
Starting this month, the pilots who fly the Army's Black Hawk helicopters and the mechanics who maintain the aircraft can browse Black Hawk data stored on multiple Web servers. At a spring conference of Black Hawk users, Paul Behrens, project officer for the Army's Engineering Data Management Systems, described the response to the Web program as fantastic.
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