HUD reroutes organizational flow chart to mirror changed mission
The Housing and Urban Development Department's new chief information officer position is part of a larger reorganization of the department's management structure. Even the HUD CIO's place in the organizational chart is changing, officials said. For instance, former HUD CIO Steven M. Yohai, as director of the Office of Information Technology, reported to the assistant secretary for administration.
CIO strength is in ideas
Now that it's out in the open, the spat among members of the Chief Information Officers Council has exposed weaknesses in the underpinnings of the CIO position and in the legislation that mandated it. The Information Technology Management and Reform Act doesn't confer any real power on CIOs. Nor is there a lot of power conferred on the CIO Council.
IBM to optimize DB2 Universal Database management system for Starfire servers
Federal data centers soon can buy IBM Corp.'s DB2 Universal Database management system optimized for E10000 Starfire servers from Sun Microsystems Inc. The Gigaplane crossbar servers accept up to 64 UltraSparc processors. IBM officials said the optimization, which could take up to six months, will require changes to about 10 percent of the database management system's code, which IBM reserves "to optimize for the operating system and the hardware underneath," said Jeff Jones, IBM program manager for
Some cookies leave a bad taste; be careful if you nibble on the Net
Mom warned you about taking cookies from strangers; although she wasn't talking about the Internet at the time, her advice is still relevant. Behind their innocuous name, cookies are essentially requests for information about you. If you accept a request to send your computer a cookie, the sending Web site can retrieve its cookie later along with whatever information it gleaned.
LAB NOTES
Flights of fancy. It may take Microsoft Corp. programmers several service packs to make a hassle-free operating system, but they are experts at creating Easter Eggs—small, built-in programs accessible via an arcane series of keystrokes and mouse clicks. Once accessed, an Easter Egg applet usually blends cute graphics with a list of the main product's developers.
Who's in charge? Major HUD Programs
Who's in charge? Andrew M. Cuomo Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Gloria R. Parker Chief Information Officer Leslie H. Graham Jr. Deputy for Operations David S. Cristy Director of Policy TOP CONTRACTORS (in millions) Lockheed Martin Corp. $81.7 Advanced Technology Systems $18.9 Computer Data Systems Inc. $18.0 Aspen Systems Corp. $7.8 Price Waterhouse $7.6 Merrill Lynch Mortgage $7.0 ABT Associates Inc. $6.1 American Management Systems Inc. $3.7 Nyma Corp.
Daniel R. Young: veteran fed reseller
Federal Data initially resold IBM Corp. products and provided services for mainframes and RISC systems at data centers. More recently, Young's company has begun supporting users of Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 in addition to Unix. GCN associate editor Bill Murray interviewed Young at his Bethesda office.
NFC's ready to 'take on' 2000
The National Finance Center has finished making its date code fixes, which is good news for the 470,000 federal employees whose paychecks the New Orleans facility processes. "Frankly, I would be prepared to take on the next century today," said the center's director, John Ortego, who reported completing the code assessment, fixes and initial tests.
DropChute+ is quirky but useful for file exchange
Pros and cons: + Faster than e-mail for large files + Prevents needless file duplication – Requires Internet Explorer 4.0 for added security under Windows 9x Real-life requirements: Windows 9x or NT 4.0, 4M free on hard drive, modem or direct TCP/IP connection, Internet Explorer 4.0 or NT Service Pack 3 for high security
PROFESSIONAL CALENDAR
21-23 Treasury Partnership Conference. Washington. Contact Federal Business Council Inc., 10810 Guilford Road, Suite 105, Annapolis Junction, Md. 20701; tel. 301-206-2940. 21-23 Leveraging Emerging Technology Conference. Washington. Contact Industrial College of the Armed Forces, Fort Lesley J. McNair, Washington, D.C. 20319; tel. 202-685-4426. 28-30 Data Warehousing Conference and exposition. New York. Contact Digital Consulting Inc. Customer Service, 204 Andover St., Andover, Mass. 01810; tel. 978-470-3880.
Education office smokes out its stovepipe systems
The systems design will focus on individual services, Russomano said. IRVINE, Calif.—The day of the stovepipe system is dead—at least in the Education Department's Office of Postsecondary Education. The office is moving away from separate systems to a modular environment that will increase integration and vendor competition, said Jerry Russomano, director of program systems service for the postsecondary office. Russomano is overseeing the reorganization of the division's systems.
LanRover Access Switch DPS has dual power supplies, cooling feature
The LanRover Access Switch DPS, a remote-access concentrator from Shiva Corp., of Bedford, Mass., will sell for the same $8,000 price as previous models. The Access Switch DPS has dual power supplies for fault tolerance and builds in cooling to lengthen component lifetimes. A 10/100-Mbps Ethernet card comes as standard. To manage the LanRover, Shiva includes a Java-based tool called the Shiva Configurator.
SCSI, IDE or Extended IDE—it is your choice, so don't get mixed up
Choosing between SCSI and IDE or Extended IDE can sometimes be a tough task. If you run many low-end PCs for standard office tasks or networked operation and connect only hard drives and CD-ROM drives via IDE or EIDE, SCSI doesn't offer enough performance advantage to compensate for its higher costs or more complex installation problems.
Handkey fingerprint reader lets in authorized, keeps out riffraff
Federal Bureau of Prisons sites have used biometrics such as those in HandKey from Recognition Systems Inc. of Campbell, Calif., to control personnel movement. But biometrics is playing an increasing role in network security—either in lieu of or in addition to passwords to verify user identity as part of a logon; or in physical security of network facilities.
Power users, meet your systems matches
All systems passed for year 2000 readiness and leap year rollover. A mighty train without a track goes nowhere fast. Likewise, a mighty PC without manageability will go nowhere on an office network. When the GCN Lab asked computer makers to send us power clients to compare, a dozen PCs arrived. Their Pentium II processors screamed at up to 400 MHz. They had husky hard drives and breakneck video acceleration. A
State's systems are vulnerable
GAO: How State can improve security Provide a central management point and continuing processes to coordinate security measures. Write risk assessment procedures. Write comprehensive security policies. Increase user awareness about security. Monitor the effectiveness of security policies and controls.
COMMUNICATIONS
The switches each have dual 150-MHz processors. They support the ATM Forum's signaling and routing specifications, and they accommodate DS3, E3, OC-3 and OC-12 WAN modules. The SmartSwitch 2500 starts at $733 per port for OC-3 fiber connections. The 2500 Workgroup switch is $8,495 for a 12-port OC-3 configuration. The 2500 Backbone switch's base configuration starts at $11,995.
It's show time for GSA's Seat Management
The General Services Administration plans to be first in line to use its new Seat Management Program contracts. Early this month, GSA awarded contracts to eight vendors: Dyncorp of Reston, Va., EER Systems Inc. of Seabrook, Md., FDC Technologies Inc. of Bethesda, Md., IBM Corp., Multimax Inc. of Largo, Md., Litton PRC Inc., Science Applications International Corp. of San Diego and Wang Government Services Inc. of McLean, Va.
High-end notebooks BUYERS GUIDE
Armada 7800, Solo 5100XL serve well as weapons for road warriors. High-end notebooks offer a smorgasbord of features. These could be very happy days if you're in the market for a high-end notebook computer. Six or eight months ago, Intel Corp. released its zippiest and most powerful mobile CPU to date, the 266-MHz Pentium with MMX.
State, local IT moves quickly
That's advice from Paul Lombardi, president of DynCorp of Reston, Va. Lombardi, who became president in March 1997, said he is consolidating the company's drive into the government IT market at all levels, including federal. DynCorp, founded in 1949, has acquired 13 IT service companies since 1991. Lombardi calls computer services, as opposed to services such as aircraft maintenance that the company used to sell, "the fountainhead for the future."
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