Is a single e-mail system enough? EPA will decide
Within weeks, Environmental Protection Agency officials will decide whether to mandate that its regional offices migrate to a standard e-mail system. A June 1997 survey found that more than 70 percent of EPA users run some version of Novell Inc.'s GroupWise. But the remaining 30 percent are running Lotus cc:Mail, Lotus Notes Mail or other messaging products, said Francine Yoder, chief architect in EPA's Information Resources Management Office.
Packets can run, but they can't hide from EtherPeek
Pros and cons: + Easy to use, flexible + Comprehensive network analysis + Good filters and triggers Real-life requirements: 133-MHz or faster processor; Win9x, NT or Mac OS; Ethernet connection; up to 6M free on hard drive A good network sniffer need not set you back thousands of dollars.
Ecosys design has long-life components
Kyocera Electronics Inc.'s FS-3700 network printer's Ecosys cartridge design incorporates long-life imaging components that the company says reduces ownership cost. The FS-3700's warranty covers the Kyocera drum and developer system for three years or 300,000 pages. The FS-3700 prints 18 pages per minute. Priced from $1,149, it has a 100-MHz PowerPC 603e processor, 4M of memory and an Adobe PostScript Level 2 interpreter.
Want more bandwidth for less bucks? Check out all of your options
It's time for the state-of-the-bandwidth report. Summer is when government buyers and specifiers spend funds they've been carefully rationing all year. For many, it's a chance to introduce high-speed technologies to their Internet connections. I recently wrote about how a new generation of asynchronous transfer mode technologies is poised for heavy integration into government networks.
Breaking News
The National Security Agency will declassify two encryption algorithms and release the Fortezza card source code, marking the first time the agency has released such sensitive data to the public. NSA's decision to make the 80-bit Skipjack encryption algorithm and 1,024-bit Key Exchange Algorithm publicly available is part of a Defense Department plan to help vendors develop low-cost, commercial data protection, DOD officials said.
NIST eyes signature revision
It has been a long wait, but the federal information technology community may soon get what it has long wanted—a significant revision of the federal standard for digital signatures. Many IT managers have been awaiting the changes since last May, when NIST issued a request for comments regarding proposed changes to Federal Information Processing Standard 186, the Digital Signature Standard. NIST officials received those comments in August.
ZyImage searches help you skip problem-plagued OCR
ZyImage 98 can highlight key words on images of original documents without lengthy and error-prone optical character recognition. ZyImage 98 users can search large volumes of original documents and sidestep OCR, said Jon Karlin, president of ZyLab International Inc. of Gaithersburg, Md. A Pentium PC can process about 8,000 pages per day using ZyImage 98, he said.
Cohen calls for better NATO communications
Better interoperability between U.S. and NATO military systems must be achieved to prepare for the next century, Defense Secretary William Cohen told U.S. allies last month. Cohen spoke to his counterparts at the North Atlantic Council Defense Ministerial in Brussels, Belgium, where he laid out his plans for meeting the challenges of the 21st century.
Navy prepares outsourcing pilots that bring IT architecture to Web
IRVINE, Calif.—The Navy is running three outsourcing pilots that focus on Web services, a Navy technology manager said. Outsourcing has been seen as a panacea for the problems of rapidly changing technology and personnel turnover, said Patsy Gates, director of strategic planning for the Navy's chief information officer. But the Navy hopes the pilots will provide a working model by which to measure such contracts, she said.
NARA group outlines archiving alternatives in a new proposal
Federal agencies need to establish specific schedules for saving and destroying electronic records, a National Archives and Records Administration workgroup said. The recommendation is part of a document outlining possible archiving alternatives for electronic records. NARA distributed the document to government agency chiefs earlier this month. The Electronic Records Workgroup recommended NARA adopt a three-pronged approach for archiving electronic copies of records that NARA previously let agencies delete under General Records Schedule 20.
DISN leads to series of additional Defense telecommunications buys
The Defense Information Systems Network program has spawned smaller telecommunications projects for Defense Department users. Besides a large DOD-wide support contract—DISN Network Management Support Services-Global—that the Defense Information Systems Agency expects to award later this year, DISA also wants to build a metropolitan area network to support users in the Washington area.
By Carl Estes
None
Electronic Grants System is ready for governmentwide rollout in fall
Agencies can use the grants system without making major upgrades. After a successful nine-month pilot, the Federal Railroad Administration has received an additional $300,000 from the Government Information Technology Services Board Innovation Fund to build the full-scale Electronic Grants System, Transportation Department officials said. The $155,000 pilot had served partly as a demonstration showcase for object request broker software from Active Software Inc., a Santa Clara, Calif., startup.
PackRat 6.0 was no keeper, but 6.1 is worth saving
Pros and cons: +Drag-and-drop simplicity for e-mail and document management – Printouts need polish Real-life requirements: Win95 or NT 4.0, 16M RAM, 8M free on hard drive In 1993, Polaris Software Inc.'s PackRat was the government's personal information manager of choice. But many users moved on because PackRat 5.0 for Microsoft Windows had bugs, slow response and an imperfect interface.
Graphics and illustration software
—Robbie Smith, information management officer, the Army's concept analysis research facility, Bethesda, Md. "It's harder finding training on [Lotus Freelance Graphics 96] than it is on, say, Microsoft products. We've developed in-house training for it because there isn't as much commercial training available for Lotus products." —Paul Braunschweig, system engineer and team leader, Environmental Protection Agency, Denver
DOD brass expect some date code systems failures
Senior Defense Department officials have acknowledged that the department will not have all its systems year 2000-ready on time. Even systems that DOD has renovated and tested might fail come Jan. 1, 2000, Hamre said, and the failure of one system could affect others. "I will be the first to say that we are in for some nasty surprises," he said.
Navy stares down big problems
Researchers who use the new supercomputer installed at the Naval Research Laboratory all have very large problems, computationally speaking. The mission of the laboratory is somewhat akin to skating near the edge of the ice, and it explains why the Navy lab in Washington owns one of the few Cray Origin2000 128-processor computers in existence.
Energy lab boosts bandwidth
A Gigabit Ethernet connection links two Cisco 7513 routers to a Cisco Catalyst 5500 LAN switch at the heart of the network, which serves about 50 buildings. Eventually, 10 backbone routers will be upgraded to gigabit/sec rates. The Berkeley, Calif., lab is doing away with shared Ethernet connectivity to desktops PCs in favor of switched LAN links for about 9,500 devices.
Agencies soon can lease PCs through NIH buys
In advance of a pending General Accounting Office report on its contracting practices, the National Institutes of Health has announced plans to add PC leasing to its three large requirements contracts. The staff of the NIH Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center is working on the contract negotiations. NITAAC runs the agency's large indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contracts.
Asset Insight supplies latest data on your network
Asset Insight 2.5 collects data about networked clients to give managers a basis for making decisions, Tangram Enterprise Solutions Inc. officials said. Managers can send out agents from Asset Insight—contained in a 2M e-mail attachment or on diskette—that will conduct regular inventories of networked products. With the Desktop Management Interface-compliant application, the Cary, N.C., company supplies an Oracle Corp. relational database management system to store the collected data.
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