GSA revs its Advantage site
The General Services Administration will unveil GSA Advantage 5.0, a faster and more user-friendly version of its online store, GSA officials said. A new search engine in the upgrade will be faster and better designed to help buyers find what they need, said Ed O'Hare, GSA Advantage project manager. GSA's Federal Supply Service eventually wants to post 4 million products on GSA Advantage at http://www.gsa.gov/advantage.
ENTERPRISE COMPUTING | Beat the Clock
| Beat the Clock Oldies but goodies. The National Finance Center in New Orleans has managed its year 2000 project without a large contingent of extra contractors, dollars or automated tools. The reason is Ed McManus, who said he manages projects the only way he knows how: "the old-fashioned way."
FAA names new buying and R&D chiefs
Herman A. Rediess will fill FAA's long-vacant aviation research director slot and help manage aviation systems R&D duties. The Federal Aviation Administration recently hired a new procurement chieftain and a new research czar. The agency last month named Steven B. Zaidman its next associate administrator for research and acquisitions, a job that involves overseeing procurements for FAA's systems modernization.
PC Card modem handles ISDN and analog links
The first multifunction PC Card modem will make seamless links between an Integrated Services Digital Network line and the analog public switched telephone network. The MultiGear ISDN+56K+Phone card, from SysGear Technology Inc. of Rowland Heights, Calif., could be on the General Services Administration's Information Technology Schedule soon, SysGear vice president Mark Erickson said at a recent trade show.
V-One responds to agencies' concerns that pager communications aren'tsecure enough
At the request of agencies that use pagers for sensitive information, V-One Corp., a virtual private networking company in Germantown, Md., has introduced a wireless client for its flagship SmartGate VPN server. The SmartPage client secures traffic to, from and between alphanumeric pagers. "The level of interest shown by government organizations following several high-profile stories of compromised pager communications confirmed the need to extend our VPN security to wireless environments," said company president and chief operating officer
PTO tracks who's using what
A radio network inventory system running on handheld computers has brought the Patent and Trademark Office good grades from the Commerce Department's inspector general. In fiscal 1997, PTO did well in the IG's annual inventory inspection, said George Naughton, president of AMT Associates of Arlington, Va., which assisted in building the system. The inspector general's random tests measure an agency's ability to track valuable items such as computers.
DOT uses X.500 to mesh its four messaging systems
The system integrates e-mail and provides communication links to DOT's intranet, the Internet and electronic commerce. The Transportation Department's new e-mail system is letting employees in the department's 14 agencies communicate with one another, DOT officials said. "We had problems with our e-mail system in 1994," said George Ramick, Transportation's messaging and Internet manager, at the recent E-Gov '98 conference in Washington.
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Navy needs cohesive strategy for year 2000 fixes, GAO report says
The Navy's lack of management and oversight controls could prevent it from fixing its computer systems by 2000, a General Accounting Office audit has concluded. The report, Defense Computers: Year 2000 Computer Problems Put Navy Operations at Risk, said the Navy took a decentralized approach to remediation efforts without initially establishing an effective year 2000 program office to manage it.
Corps prepares to field wearable data systems
The Marine Corps is mulling a commercial security standard that would extend command and control applications over wireless LANs to handheld computers for Marines in the field. "It's not the guy with the biggest biceps who wins the battle but the one who can push the information around," said Maj. James Cummiskey, technical adviser to the commanding officer at the Tactical Systems Support Activity at Camp Pendleton, Calif.
coming UP
The buzz in the printing market is about color laser printers, how their prices have dropped in the past year and how their page-per-minute performance on the network demands a second look. That look is in the Aug. 3 issue's Buyers Guide. Proud of your agency's Web site? So are plenty of federal workers. In the Aug. 3 GCN we'll debut Webworks, in which we review outstanding government Web pages. Webmasters can pick up tips on
EDI helps agencies move POs
"We should easily be able to automate 85 percent of our invoicing," GSA's Ed McCay said. The General Services Administration's Federal Supply Service receives up to 3,000 purchase orders a day at its Heartland Finance Center in Kansas City, Mo. "There is no way we could handle that many purchase orders" if some did not arrive electronically, said Ed McCay, project manager for Fedpay, the Federal Supply Service Payment System.
Agencies look to industry for integration help
Federal information technology managers rarely have an easy road, especially as they work to integrate the hodgepodge of systems that populate their agencies. Somehow, it has always been easier to create new systems than to make them work together. But demand for data and information has grown. Application integration is one of the biggest challenges facing IT managers.
Customs hunts air smugglers
Pilots carrying illegal cargo will find it more difficult to slip through U.S. airspace undetected now that the Customs Service has nearly completed a three-year, $17 million upgrade of its air surveillance system. The improvements to the system at the Domestic Air Interdiction Coordination Center in Riverside, Calif., will let Customs radar controllers track more aircraft and easily differentiate between legitimate fliers and smugglers, center director Joseph W. Maxwell said.
Navigating is easier than before with map app
Pros and cons: + Versatile software and great remote control – Requires notebook with CD-ROM drive – Database incomplete Real-life requirements: Win95, Pentium notebook, CD-ROM drive, 100M free on hard drive, PC Card slot for GPS connection, sound card for voice alerts If you drive in circles until you run out of gas rather than look at a map, don't read this review.
Upgrades earn marks
As we get into the thick of the federal buying season, software upgrade questions are everywhere. Some users are dealing with Microsoft Windows 98 and new (to them) applications. Many administrators will soon be dealing with Novell NetWare 5.0. Next year will bring another round of office suites. On Page 20 of our July 13 issue, we ran a sample from a barrage of letters on Power User John McCormick's column about Corel WordPerfect 8 and
VA credits software, management for success of year 2000 program
A relatively early start, in-house software expertise and senior manager involvement are all helping the Veterans Affairs Department keep its year 2000 program on track, VA officials said. A review of VHA's progress by Booz, Allen & Hamilton Inc. of McLean, Va., in May found there will be no direct or immediate impact on VA patient care or benefits payments come January 2000, Bourget said. The auditors cited VHA's readiness effort as a best-practices case, he
Now that summer's here, out come GCN's product report cards
AG Group Inc. EtherPeek 3.1, June 29, Page 1; A American Biometric Co. BioMouse Desktop Fingerprint Scanner 2.6, April 20, Page 36; A Apple Computer Inc. Apple Studio Display, June 22, Page 1; A– Ascend Communications Inc. Max TNT 1.3Ap6, March 9, Page 23; A AT&T Wireless Services AT&T PocketNet, April 27, Page 1; C+
HP doubles the capacity of its SureStore jukeboxes
Hewlett-Packard Co. has begun shipping magneto-optical storage jukeboxes with double the capacity of previous HP SureStore jukeboxes and a lower cost per megabyte, HP officials said. The new SureStore jukeboxes, which have 5.2G optical drives, store 80G to 1.2 terabytes of data. The last generation of SureStores had 2.6G optical drives.
Breaking News - Hacker hits AF systems
An unidentified hacker late last month broke into computers at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., marking the first time that the base's computer security has been breached, officials said. The hacker got into the Eglin systems through a Silicon Graphics Inc. workstation owned and operated by an undisclosed vendor doing work at the base. Soon after the breach, Eglin's network administrators detected the intrusion and shut the workstation down, cutting off the hacker's access.
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