House lawmakers feud over date code monies
A Capitol Hill power struggle has put proposed emergency year 2000 funds in limbo. A group of conservative House Republicans want lawmakers to offset proposed emergency monies with budget cuts. But House lawmakers are at odds over what constitutes an emergency. Under House rules, emergency funding requests don't require budget cuts. The fight has the overtones of a partisan battle, some industry analysts said, adding that some Republican lawmakers might be trying to use the year 2000 issue
Microsoft's vigilance makes it king of the desktop
The information technology architectures of most offices, including those of federal agencies, are written in Washington—Redmond, Wash., that is. Microsoft Corp. supplies 95 percent of all desktop PC operating systems and a majority of the software titles installed on them. Microsoft Windows NT networks are challenging Novell Inc. and other competitors in the LAN market. Microsoft has nearly wrested the browser market from Netscape Communications Corp. The integration of Windows 98 and Internet Explorer into a seamless
OFPP needs to move forward, inspire others
In naming a candidate for administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy at the Office of Management and Budget, the Clinton administration appropriately focused on finding a candidate to improve the government's procurement process. Former OFPP administrator Steve Kelman moved the office ahead with such speed and skill that he attained near-mythical status. But he's been gone more than a year.
Horn: Agencies will get funds for code work
The chairman of a newly formed House year 2000 task force said last week that Congress will give agencies whatever funds they need to fix their systems. Rep. Steve Horn (R-Calif.) and other Republicans also chided the Clinton administration about the government's progress on year 2000 work during a hearing of the House Government Reform and Oversight Subcommittee on Government Management, Information and Technology.
Here's where to find the best ways to find anything on the Web
Faster Internet connections make a difference for serious Web searches, but software helpers can do better and are easier to acquire and install than, say, an Integrated Services Digital Network link. If you have to wait forever to get to hot links, try a browser accelerator. These handy utilities store locally the pages you most recently visited, but their best feature is preloading pages.
New systems sharpen investigative edge
GCN: What is information technology's role at the Drug Enforcement Administration? CAMERO: It is fairly substantial. I recall a number of years ago when the special agent in charge of the New York bureau was visiting headquarters. We were talking about the role of technology in his operation. His comment was very telling. He said, conservatively, 70 percent to 75 percent of the cases in DEA could not be made without the
BRIEFING BOOK
Experiment at sea. The Navy last month tested software that can let the service plan and coordinate joint theater air and missile defenses. The Navy used the prototype software, called the Area Air Defense Commander module, during Fleet Battle Experiment Charlie in the western Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. The module, developed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., lets a commander quickly gather data on missile and air attacks and
Data transformer package now works for enterprise
The individual spokes map-specific data to target structures. The Data Junction data transformer package, around since early MS-DOS days, now has a graphical Enterprise Edition that the company said can handle conversions from mainframe databases from IBM Corp., Oracle Corp. and Informix Software Inc. of Menlo Park, Calif.
LAB NOTES
Virtual Security on VPNs? A consulting company recently released a report that found major flaws in Microsoft Corp.'s implementation of its Point to Point Tunneling Protocol, which is used to create virtual private networks. The company, Counterpane Systems of Minneapolis, said in its report that the version of PPTP in Microsoft Windows 95 and Windows NT has security holes. Among the problems, Counterpane said, the operating systems base packet encryption on a user's password, which is
Bid it or ignore it
Is too much competition a bad thing? Some systems vendors apparently think so. The baldest example was a letter from the Coalition for Federal Procurement to Rep. Steve Horn (R-Calif.) asking that Congress kill a Transportation Department commodity systems and services contract [GCN, June 15, Page 69]. In the letter, the Washington coalition's president and executive director appealed to Horn, chairman of the House Government Reform and Oversight Subcommittee on Government Management, Information and Technology, to halt
rat
The Rat took his annual masochistic jaunt to PC Expo in New York this month. Having set his expectations low, the cyberrodent wasn't too surprised to find himself wandering across a crowded wasteland: 10 acres of nothing new on the banks of the Hudson River. As usual, though, there were plenty of pagan rituals to watch.
Web site management tools
Web site management tools Agencies spend thousands of dollars and many months developing their Web sites, and often what results is a well-functioning, error-free place where visitors can get fast access to timely documents. But for webmasters, that's just the beginning. If the site doesn't grow and include new content, services and applications, it becomes an electronic ghost town.
AFFIRM names Flyzik IT exec of year
Treasury CIO James J. Flyzik says that successful IT reinvention programs help employees handle cultural change. James J. Flyzik, the Treasury Department's chief information officer, won the recognition of his peers this month. The Association for Federal Information Resources Management awarded Flyzik, who is also vice chairman of the CIO Council, its information technology executive of the year award. Each year, AFFIRM, a member organization of government systems workers, recognizes outstanding executive leadership in
Axent packages its firewalls with Compaq servers for cheap turnkey network security
Axent Technologies Inc. of Rockville, Md., is throwing a fire sale on firewalls. Its Raptor 5.0 package for Microsoft Windows NT now comes bundled with Compaq Computer Corp. servers at a deep discount. The Axent Secure Packs, which provide turnkey network security for large or small enterprises, arrive preconfigured and ready to plug into a network.
Army makes plans for leasing PCs, buying network gear
The Army Communications and Electronics Command will award blanket purchasing agreements for leasing PCs, a CECOM contracting official said. Systems offered on the Army Leasing BPA will have similar configurations to the products on the Army PC-2 contract, said Lee Harvey, acquisition management officer at the CECOM Acquisition Center–Washington Operations Office.
Smithsonian designers exhibit their software smarts
The design software and computer power lets exhibit designers move away from traditional typesetting. Artists at the Smithsonian Institution use design software that helps them create museum exhibits and compete with design companies. The Audubon exhibit at the National Museum of American History is one of the latest products of the Smithsonian Institution's Office of Exhibits Central, the technical drawing and production arm of the Smithsonian.
NEW COMMUNICATION PRODUCTS
Virtual Telephone from Lucent Technologies Inc. of Murray Hill, N.J., lets mobile workers handle e-mail, voice mail and phone calls simultaneously over a single phone line. A user who has the Virtual Telephone client software and Microsoft NetMeeting can establish a virtual private network via a remote-access server or LAN connection. The user can log onto the Virtual Telephony server loaded on a Lucent Internet Telephone Server-E or a server running Microsoft Windows NT.
Census sires system to foster broader access to its records
Census Bureau officials are thinking out of the box as they design data tabulation and distribution systems for the future. The bureau's Data Access and Dissemination System (DADS) now under construction will serve a potentially unlimited number of users, ranging from students and reporters to congressional staff, demographers and statisticians. For the first time in the bureau's history, the public will interact directly with Census' data warehouse, said Enrique Gomez, DADS program manager and systems division chief
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Beware the easy fix I was rather amazed that in his column, John McCormick first says that two large causes of the Internet's apparent slowness are the inefficiency of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol and the Internet routing system [GCN, May 18, Page 43]. But at the end of the article he recommends products which, by design, severely exacerbate the problem.
Army center succeeds with archival plan
The Center for Army Lessons Learned at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., may be a step ahead of other government organizations in preserving electronic records. The center has made a showcase of its Virtual Research Library information system, which by all accounts meets the Defense Department's 5015.2-Std mandatory electronic record-keeping requirements. "So as far as I know, we are the first to implement the standard," said Karen Shaw, senior information and records manager for the Army Directorate of Information
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