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.
Who will protect from hackers? Only the Shadow group knows
Hackers have help breaking into government networks. They share their resources and techniques on special mail lists and encrypted chat areas. Government security administrators are taking a similar team approach to combat the intruders. A small group of government network security experts has been using the method with industry counterparts. The exchanges have helped them form a consensus, though not full agreement, on what to do when an intruder penetrates a private network via the Internet.
There's nowhere to seek refuge if your software starts out extra buggy
"What's the deal with Microsoft Windows 98?" the Rat muttered from his lead-lined cubicle. The furry one had just heard that Microsoft Corp.'s first service pack for Win98 was going into beta testing only a couple of weeks after the operating system made its debut. The cyberrodent was afraid he knew what was going on. Instead of shipping out hundreds of thousands of beta copies for marketing purposes, as it had with Windows 95, Microsoft is instead
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
This version's almost perfect To John McCormick: I liked your column, and I share your view regarding the addition of "… a zillion useless bells and whistles …" in WordPerfect [GCN, June 15, Page 43]. The first version of WordPerfect I learned was 5.1. I find that it still meets almost all of my needs, executes very quickly, never crashes and doesn't take up much disk space.
Commerce will supply export licenses via Net
The Bureau of Export Administration will soon let companies apply for export licenses via the Internet. "The Simplified Network Application Processing system uses strong encryption, certification and authentication technologies, as well as provides recovery capabilities," said William Alan Reinsch, undersecretary for export administration at the Commerce Department. "SNAP will reduce paperwork and improve accuracy in the bureau."
DOD scripts revision to date code management plan
"Read it. Do it. Report back," Curtis said. The Defense Department has drafted a new Year 2000 Management Plan to give systems managers more detailed guidance on fixing date codes. Defense in April 1997 issued its first version of the Year 2000 Management Plan, which contained broad guidance on prioritizing systems with date code flaws. A draft second version with more specifics was issued late last month by William Curtis, DOD's
Justice expands IT strategies
Justice will enumerate its systems needs in a late summer report, says Mary Ellen Condon, the department's director of information management and security. The Justice Department will soon unveil an ambitious information technology program that aims to increase the reach of law enforcement using more secure systems, a top Justice IT official said recently.
Go that extra mile on your IP network bandwidth with new voice-over products
Several new voice-over-IP products promise not only to reduce long-distance telephone costs but also to squeeze more duty out of existing IP network bandwidth. E-Net Inc. of Germantown, Md., has announced a new version of its Telecom 2000 Digital Trunk Interface Gateway to connect private branch exchange trunk lines across a WAN. E-Net also released an audio card that lets a telephone plug directly into a PC for Internet calls.
The sound of your voice can be the key that unlocks new IVR systems
Periphonics Corp. of Bohemia, N.Y., which supplied the IRS' TeleFile interactive voice response technology, is turning to voice verification on its IVR systems. Periphonics has incorporated voice verification products from Veritel Corp. of Chicago and T-Netix Inc. of Englewood, Colo., into its Open Signal Computing and Analysis Resource, or OSCAR, speech-processing algorithms. A caller's voice can determine system access rights similar to the way a fingerprint does.
Oceans apart, Navy sailors see eye-to-eye via videoconferencing
Videoconferences let commanders carry out routine meetings. The service wants all its ships and submarines to have videoconferencing systems by 2003. The Video Teleconferencing (VTC) Project is part of the service's Information Technology for the 21st Century initiative, said Adm. Archie Clemins, commander of the Navy's Pacific Fleet, at last month's Naval League Convention in Seattle.
IRS hires IT consultant—is he the next CIO?
"This is a complicated position where you have to keep a lot of balls in the air." As Congress was putting the final touches on a bill to reform the IRS, which lawmakers passed July 6, the agency was tapping a consultant to help it with systems modernization.
BRIEFING BOOK
Computer autopsy? The computer forensics laboratory at the Air Force Office of Special Investigations is now a Defense Department lab. The Defense Computer Forensics Laboratory at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington will help DOD process evidence used in counterintelligence, criminal and fraud cases. A joint working group selected OSI to become an executive agency based on its expertise in forensic media analysis. The lab will analyze computer disks and hard drives for evidence of fraud
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