2000 could cause recession, experts say
NEW YORK--A former Federal Reserve Bank official and a former Defense Department systems chief both recently warned the government about global fallout from the year 2000 computer crisis. "It's time to prepare for trouble," said Edward Yardeni, who once worked at the Fed in New York and is now chief economist and managing director of Deutsche Morgan Grenfell, a multinational investment bank. He spoke at a conference here late last month.
NIH agency applies First Aid
Timothy Barnes bought First Aid for home use last year and liked it so much that he volunteered to beta-test a network version of the PC repair package. Barnes, chief of the Intramural Technical Systems Branch at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, last fall began testing the CyberMedia Support Server (CSS) Repair Engine for Workgroups 1.0 from CyberMedia Inc. of Santa Monica, Calif.
CD-ROM tower is faster with Windows 95 than with NT
When the GCN Lab previously tested SMS Data Products' Millenia CD-ROM tower, we encountered some performance and configuration problems. The new Millenia 700 has faster drives and a revamped communications module. Configuration problems were largely nonexistent this time around, but performance still lagged, especially under NT. Under Windows 95, programs can make direct calls to the disk hardware. Under NT, the operating system layer handles the calls.
Thin servers cut fat from LAN menus
Is your server feeling bloated these days? Client-server computing was supposed to rescue us from centralized mainframe networks by distributing the information more evenly. Instead, as enterprise data grew, the servers have gotten fatter and more expensive to manage. The recent trend toward a distributed server model has a new twist. In addition to setting up server-class hardware, loading an operating system and establishing thin-client accounts, you now can attach extra devices called thin servers
Pentium II notebooks are powerful but power-hungry
Although the mobile version of the 266-MHz Pentium II doesn't quite match the desktop version, it comes very close. It blows away the same-speed Pentium MMX, previously top-of-the-line in portable processors. The GCN Lab tested a Pentium II-powered Latitude CPi D266XT notebook from Dell Computer Corp. It displayed 22 percent better performance on the GCNdex32™ math benchmark than a 266-MHz Pentium MMX notebook. The score was about 6 percent lower than for a similar Dell
IRS rolls out final RFP
In the long-awaited final request for proposals for its tax systems modernization program, the IRS made changes to head in the direction IRS commissioner Charles Rossotti now wants the service to go. The IRS solicitation underscores the difference between Rossotti's vision and that of Arthur Gross, the former chief information officer who developed the draft RFP.
Navy seeks servicewide deals to cut software license costs
The Navy is working to negotiate as many servicewide license agreements as possible with its existing software vendors to get the lowest possible prices on software, maintenance and support. Navy and Novell Inc. in late January signed the Navy's first-ever enterprisewide licensing agreement, which covers all Novell products on the General Services Administration schedule. The multiyear agreement includes maintenance and telephone support for the Navy and Marine Corps.
Keep A-76 as policy
Congress should do the right thing with HR 716 and S 314. Trash them. The bills seek to turn the Office of Management and Budget's Circular A-76 policies into law. A-76 is the document that says agencies shouldn't compete with the private sector and should use commercial services when they're available at favorable cost.
It's time to make OMB Circular A-76 into law
Office of Management and Budget circulars are presidential decision directives to federal agencies telling them how to behave. One of the policy directives, OMB Circular A-76, titled Performance of Commercial Activities, has been a policy constant since 1955. During what is the 43rd year of the bedrock federal policy, it is time to enshrine the fundamental principle it represents in law. A-76 was initiated by President Eisenhower and reviewed and updated by the Johnson, Carter
CIOs advise best use of e-mail
That cute, animated Web birthday card sent to a federal employee is slowing down agency e-mail systems, a new report on improving agency e-mail interoperability said. The report, from the Chief Information Officer Council, offers guidelines on streamlining messaging. E-mail interoperability is a key issue for the CIO Council, and council members focused on it during the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association's recent Virtual Government conference.
If you think you know what most techie terms mean--then read on
Readers often e-mail me questions about computer terms, so I thought it was time to write a real-world glossary of common technical words. Please e-mail me your additions and corrections. Battery life: Lies, damned lies and statistics. Boot: To reject with disgust, as in, "It didn't work, so I kept booting and rebooting it." Cold boot: The same operation, but performed with the contempt born of long experience.
SEC looks ahead and sees more outsourcing
The Securities and Exchange Commission is revamping its Office of Information Technology because it has found that SEC could make much better use of its technology. SEC began the reorganization in December and will complete changes by summer 1999. As part of the process, the commission expects to outsource much of its IT work, SEC chief information officer Michael Bartell said.
Storage drives become voracious wolves in sheep garb to poor Rat
He who lives by the sword dies by the sword, as the Rat's curriculum vitae has confirmed with great frequency. Of course, it might help if the sword-makers did a better job. Take the cyberrodent's latest data fiasco. Take it, please, the Rat begs. With an eye out for ways to leverage technology, the wired one had pushed long and hard for his agency to standardize on one flavor or another of commercially available removable-media
Electronic media offer more than space for storage
Records management is a curse on an average webmaster, but it may soon become a major part of the job of running a Web site. As agencies come to depend on electronic versions of policies and procedures found on their own Web sites and those of other agencies, the demand for paper originals will fade. Most federal agencies simply don't have enough staff to maintain archives of paper copies.
ICE-MAN is an example of good management
We now have fresh evidence that federal employees have the right stuff managerially and technically. We should be proud of their performance. I'm referring to the Integrated Computing Environment'Mainframe and Networking program, the Federal Aviation Administration's controversial eight-year, $250-million, competitively-awarded, best-value contract with the Agriculture Department's National Information Technology Center in Kansas City. ICE-MAN was principally a replacement for the Computer Resources Nucleus (CORN) program with additions.
DOD: IT spending rolls along
The Defense Department will spend $12.3 billion on information technology this year. That's 40 percent of what the department will spend on its command, control, communications and computers programs. DOD officials said that they expect IT projects will continue to dominate C4 spending next year as well. DOD estimates it will spend $12.4 billion--roughly $10 billion for its basic systems budget and additional funds for selected command and control systems--in fiscal 1999.
Firewall Guard Dog barks at cookies, viruses and dubious pages
Guard Dog has lots of optional tools to block various Net threats such as cookies, which are files sent to your computer by many of the Web pages you view. Cookies speed access to desired information, but they also store data about your PC and files, track sites you visit, and send this information back to the operator of the Web site that originated them--or to any other site that requests them.
GSA issues solicitation for single IT Schedule
After months of delay, the General Services Administration has issued a solicitation for a new, single Information Technology Schedule. The IT Schedule will replace five existing schedules: 70 A for large computer products, 70 B/C for microcomputer products, 70 D for refurbished equipment, 70 E for electronic commerce products, and 58 VI/VII for telecommunications products.
Even with all that Jaz, StorPoint HD/4 storage tower has a short memory
The GCN Lab last year favorably reviewed a 1G Jaz drive [GCN, June 16, 1997, Page 35]. Now Axis has incorporated four of the Jaz drives into a single small tower for network access. This would be a good arrangement for small workgroups that share large volumes of geographic information system, computer-aided design or medical files. In environments that publish their electronic documents, the Axis tower could act as a depository for archival copies.
FEDSIM changes its workflow
Processing procurements at the General Service Administration's Federal Systems Integration and Management Center was fraught with peril--until officials decided to create a virtual processing system. FEDSIM, one of four cost centers in the Federal Technology Service's Office of Information Technology Integration, provides IT goods and services to federal agencies nationwide on a cost-reimbursable basis.
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