Department consolidates its old financial systems
The Education Department's upgrade and consolidation of three legacy accounting and financial systems, a project that strained the department's budget over the past few years, is finished several months ahead of schedule, Education officials said. The Education Central Automated Processing System (EDCAPS) is composed of three financial packages and is under the supervision of the department's chief financial officer. The system reduces redundancy and lowers the department's staff needs, Education officials said.
Serious about surfing? Try out these browser alternatives, plug-ins
Faster Internet connections do make a difference for serious Web searches, but software helpers can be even better. Software is easier to acquire and install than, say, buying and setting up an Integrated Services Digital Network link. If you have to wait for what seems like forever to get to hot links, try a browser accelerator. These handy utilities store locally the pages you most recently visited. A browser accelerator's best feature is its ability to
Lew: Don't overdo oversight
Agencies shouldn't have to report their year 2000 progress as often as Congress might like, said the man nominated to be the next head of the Office of Management and Budget. "The greatest immediate challenge is the year 2000 computer problem," OMB deputy director Jacob J. Lew told the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee during his confirmation hearing June 22.
New Communication Products
Voice and data traffic travels through the Corporate Communicator over a single private branch exchange digital connection. Users can place, answer, forward, hold and conference calls themselves. A Caller ID feature recognizes incoming calls and brings up a personal information manager to display data about the caller. The network manager can turn on or off all inbound and outbound data and fax traffic for single users or for groups. Compaq resellers price the Corporate Communicator at
GCN SNAPSHOT | Education | TOP CONTRACTORS
| Education TOP CONTRACTORS (for fiscal 1998, in thousands)
Air Force lifts ban and issues policy on BPAs
The Air Force recently lifted a six-month ban on creating new blanket purchasing agreements and issued a policy statement on the agreements. Concerned about the unregulated growth of BPAs on General Services Administration Federal Supply Schedules, the Air Force in October 1997 banned the creation of new BPAs until an integrated product team could study the issue. The policy is based on a series of team meetings held in December.
Cabletron adds new backbone switch for ATM
A new member of Cabletron Systems Inc.'s SmartSwitch family rounds out the Rochester, N.H., company's asynchronous transfer mode products. The SmartSwitch 6500, designed for data centers and campus backbones, fits between the Model 2500 workgroup and wiring closet switch and the 9500 enterprise switch. The 6500's 10-Gbps ATM switching chassis works at T3 to OC-12 rates.
Has Indian Affairs found a silver date code bullet?
BIA computer specialists Rick Namm and Susan Ellison use Millennium Solution to fix bureau date code. There may not be a silver bullet with which to slay the year 2000 problem, but at least one agency official believes a small company's remediation software comes close.
Getting info out is center's focus
The National Library of Education has launched EDPubs, the Education Department's one-stop information center. EDPubs distributes books, magazines, videos, brochures, posters and other documents about Education. It has a searchable database of the department's products and a customer call center for ordering. The emphasis is on exceptional customer service, including quick turnaround times for departmental product requests, department officials said.
coming UP
Take a tour of the front lines. The Aug. 10 GCN Spotlight will look at the daily trials and triumphs of six federal systems managers who work in the trenches, from the General Services Administration to the Navy. Webmasters, hone your page-making talents with authoring tools. The Aug. 10 Buyers Guide will have all the details on packages to build sites.
SQL Server gets an overhaul
C2 security is extremely important, and historically SQL Server has not been C2-certified. Jim Gray, a senior researcher at Microsoft Corp.'s Bay Area Research Center, is the company's database guru and chief scalability architect for Microsoft SQL Server 7.0. Besides supporting terabyte databases, Gray said SQL Server 7.0 will have an integrated online analytical processing (OLAP) server and an application programming interface called OLE DB for OLAP.
Agencies discover tool set to cure development ills
Program managers at NASA and the National Security Agency recently bought automated tools from Software Emancipation Technology Inc. of Burlington, Mass., to attack some of their most vexing client-server software development problems. The software craft is less than 50 years old, company president Donald Henrich said, and it lacks the structured processes that older engineering disciplines have evolved to handle complexity.
Navy hosts exercise without Coalition WAN
For Rim of the Pacific '98, a monthlong international maritime wargame, navies from six nations are running exercises without the benefit of the Coalition WAN. CWAN is the common coalition backbone that provides real-time collaborative planning, interoperability and connectivity between U.S. and allied forces. Forces set up the secret-level network for each use and dismantle it afterward.
Consolidation efforts give Navy leverage
GCN: During a recent briefing on the future of IT in the Navy, you didn't once mention the Information Technology for the 21st Century initiative. Is IT-21 still viable? MILLER: It's very much alive. IT-21 as an initiative is not going away, but it's not a program of record. What I'm trying to do is take IT-21, which is a fleet-driven initiative that doesn't consider all of the Navy, and extend it.
Walter Reed prescribes ATM
The Walter Reed Army Medical Center is replacing its tired and sickly information systems network with a new architecture. At the Washington medical center—the Army's largest—an asynchronous transfer mode network project will give the hospital better speed and fluidity in its information systems, hospital officials said. It will also put more flat-panel displays in patient wards and support as many as 470 X Window terminals, said Capt. Richard J. Gordon, the center's chief information officer.
PROFESSIONAL CALENDAR
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 TechnicalPeople in Leadership Roles Seminar. Washington. Contact Fred Pryor Seminars, P.O. Box 2951, Shawnee Mission, Kan. 66201; tel. 800-255-6139. 9-11 Federal Database Colloquium Exposition and conference. San Diego. Contact Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association, 4400 Fair Lakes Court, Fairfax, Va. 22033; tel. 703-631-6133. 14 Federal IT Systems
Fliers scout with GIS package
The Navy is installing a geographic information system on notebook PCs in E-2C Hawkeye early warning aircraft to overlay map data on targets in real time. Co-pilots in two Navy squadrons started using the Joint Tactical Information Distribution System (JTIDS) Moving Map Tactical Information Display System (JMMTIDS) in late March, said Cmdr. Kevin T. McCarthy of Airborne Early Warning Squadron 113.
Feds develop freeware app to foil hackers
Shadow combines monitoring with statistical assessment to detect events that filters cannot decode. A consortium of agencies and private organizations has released a free network intrusion detector to combat about 40 types of cyberattacks. The intrusion detection team at the Naval Surface Warfare Center at Dahlgren, Va., primarily developed the Shadow freeware using Energy Department code.
DOD raises concerns over possible AT&T, British Telecom deal
A proposed $10 billion global venture between AT&T Corp. and British Telecommunications PLC has raised security concerns about a major Defense Information Systems Network contract held by AT&T, Defense Department officials said. The Defense Information Systems Agency is studying whether the deal would compromise AT&T's $5 billion DISN Transmission Services for the Continental United States contract. AT&T is providing backbone and access area transmission services at bandwidth rates of T1 and higher to DOD facilities in
System details
Server hardware: Dell Computer Corp. PowerEdge 4200 server with single 333-MHz processor RAM: 256M Storage: 20G Operating system: Microsoft Windows NT Web server: Microsoft Site Server Connection: T1 line Application interface: Allaire Corp. Cold Fusion, augmented by Unix perl scripts. Java applications are available in the kids' section. Host: A Washington-area FEMA office Personnel: Technical support from Bell Atlantic Federal Services Webmaster: Dave Wellman of Bell Atlantic Corp. Content manager: Mark Wolfson of FEMA Graphics:
Do Not Sell My Personal Information
When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.
Manage Consent Preferences
Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active
We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.
Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies
Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link
If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.
Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.
Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.
If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.
Cookie List
A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:
Strictly Necessary Cookies
We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.
Functional Cookies
We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.
Performance Cookies
We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.
Sale of Personal Data
We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.
Social Media Cookies
We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.
Targeting Cookies
We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.