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
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.
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