FEMA takes PCs to the field to speed disaster-data gathering
MT. WEATHER, Va.--A Federal Emergency Management Agency official hunkers over his PC screen as tornadoes rip across Arkansas. But the twisters aren't real. The simulated storm is part of FEMA's month-long test of a new system to improve the agency's response to disasters. FEMA, the agency that determines infrastructure damage and the needs of survivors after disasters, is measuring the system's performance against recent natural calamities such as earthquakes, flash fires, flooding rivers and powerful
A bit heavy to carry, Gateway's Solo 9100 performs well in file access
As screens and hard drives expand and draw more power from batteries, you expect some weight gain. But remember how awkward and heavy those old luggables were, and how little their 286 and 386 processors could do? We'll laugh at today's notebooks in another 10 years, too. The GCN Lab usually compares a notebook with others that have similar features. In this case it's a little difficult, as the Solo 9100 is a road-warrior notebook
180-MHz PCs for IWS/LAN? If price is right
Sure, the Social Security Administration would take the latest PCs for its Intelligent Workstation/LAN contract--if Unisys Corp. would sell them to the agency at the contract's specified Year 2 price. D. Dean Mesterharm, deputy commissioner for systems, said SSA would accept PCs that are faster than the 100-MHz Pentiums Unisys is installing for ISW/LAN.
Low-priced Armada 7300 is tough, reliable for travel
Many computer makers want to see a review in print as soon as possible. Compaq's offer conveyed a more relaxed attitude about the Armada 7300, and with good reason. It's not the fastest or the lightest notebook, but it strikes a good balance of power, features and weight. For several months, I carried it on trips to Japan, Las Vegas, Texas and home for the holidays. It never gave a single worry from accidental bumps,
A NASA flight system interface goes commercial
The command and control interface familiar to shuttle flight engineers is moving out of the NASA world and becoming a general-purpose systems interface. Kinesix Corp. of Houston has groomed its Standards-based Advanced Man-Machine Interface as a $300-per-seat window for high-level managers to see "the very same data the guys in the control room are seeing, pretty much any time they wish," said Russ Jamerson, Kinesix vice president of marketing.
NOAA scientists reach new depths in sea data collection
A crew of systems engineers, normally creatures of the office, sailed this month on the 230-foot hydrographic survey ship Rainier from Seattle to the uncharted coasts around Alaska. Their job: to install a four-way Silicon Graphics Inc. Origin2000 data server on the shipboard network that will receive floods of new information about the ocean bottom.
Don't dream in vain
Interoperable federal information technology architecture--that phrase, or variations, keeps popping up in pronouncements from the Chief Information Officers Council. The CIO Council wants to have a governmentwide architecture. As Agriculture Department CIO Ann Thomson Reed recently said at an Armed Forced Communications and Electronics Association conference, "This is one of those issues where we, as a CIO Council, are going to say, 'This is important to us' " [GCN, March 9, Page 12].
NASA's site carries star data
How do you serve up a terabyte of data that gets downloaded from the World Wide Web at a rate of 1.7 million files per month? The High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., relies on a 333-MHz Digital Equipment Corp. AlphaStation 600 Hypertext Transfer Protocol server with 384M of RAM and nine Web addresses.
GIF animation breathes life into dull site
Webmasters everywhere are busy livening their sites with spinning, sparkling multimedia through Macromedia ShockWave, Java and Dynamic Hypertext Markup Language. These and a slew of other new World Wide Web technologies add glitz at a price: They force visitors to keep downloading new plug-ins and browsers. Most agency webmasters are understandably reluctant to impose this kind of burden on the public.
SSA chief says 100-MHz systems can handle job
The Social Security Administration commissioner insists that PCs with 100-MHz processors will meet the agency's requirements into the next century. "It would be a waste of taxpayers' money to go with more expensive computers," SSA Commissioner Kenneth S. Apfel said in response to a question from Rep. Kenny C. Hulshof (R-Mo.) at a joint hearing this month of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Human Resources and its Subcommittee on Social Security.
I-TIPS tracks IT dollars
The departments of Agriculture, Energy and Housing and Urban Development are testing a system that lets agencies manage the money they spend on systems as capital investments. The Information Technology Investment Portfolio System (I-TIPS), which agencies can run as an intranet application, will help systems managers ensure that IT investments mesh with their agencies' critical objectives, Energy and USDA officials said.
3,000 State PCs get BIOS fix for date code error
State is one of the first agencies to tackle PC readiness aggressively, halting shipments under its flagship SII PC/LAN buy for the last four months. "We've solved 99 percent of the problem," said Ronne Rogin, a contracting officer in State's Logistics Management Office. When 133-MHz Pentiums from BTG Inc. of Fairfax, Va., failed State's year 2000 tests last November, the department halted further PC and server shipments from the company, Rogin said.
Army opens up and says aah
To unify its eclectic mix of servers and client systems, the Army is adopting a standard, open systems architecture. "We have to embrace open systems standards that allow the entire computer industry to compete for our business," said Lt. Gen. William Campbell, the Army's director of information systems for command, control, communications and computers.
Flyzik to Horn: Report cards get an F
James J. Flyzik has begun a grassroots campaign to get Rep. Steve Horn (R-Calif.) to expand the criteria his subcommittee uses to come up with its year 2000 report cards. The Treasury Department's chief information officer said recently that the California Republican's report cards have outlived their usefulness. Agencies are focused on fixing date code in mission-critical systems, he said, and more bad grades will not heighten the focus.
The Rat finds tall-tale way to spend federal budget surplus money
Readers will recall the Rat's request in January for ideas on how to spend the coming federal budget surplus. It just doesn't seem right to blow it all on Social Security, so the cyberrodent issued a request for information to get some better ideas. Now, with a settlement from the tobacco industry on the way to push the budget over the top, it's time to look at readers' winning entries in the Rat's Spend the
If you need a utility, the $25 NetScanTools likely has it
NetScanTools, a $25 shareware program, fits the bill. NetScanTools organizes many common and esoteric diagnostic utilities under one interface. Most of them began life in the Unix world, such as the ping command that verifies communication with another IP address. You can't troubleshoot TCP/IP networks without lots of information, and gathering it all into one place is a big help. Power users will appreciate the utilities for connectivity testing, too.
Curator holds the IT artifacts
While many of his government colleagues plot ways to get new computers, David Allison spends his days collecting old computers and thinking about their impact on society. The Smithsonian Institution's curator of computers at the National Museum of American History works with a small staff to preserve and interpret the artifacts of the information age.
NARA awaits public opinion on policy options
The National Archives and Records Administration is turning to the public for help on guidelines for archiving electronic documents. The NARA Electronic Records Work Group this month issued some preliminary options for replacing General Records Schedule 20, which had been the government's policy for archiving electronic documents until a federal judge tossed the schedule out as inadequate. NARA is appealing the ruling.
To stem departures, IRS will give 1,000 programmers 10% bonus
Over the next two years, IRS wants to spend $61 million on raises that agency officials hope will keep systems employees from defecting to industry. IRS commissioner Charles Rossotti told the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Treasury, Postal Service and General Government that he negotiated the salary increases with the National Treasury Employees Union.
NARA lacks processing power
The National Archives doesn't have the computing power it will need to copy and store the millions of electronic files headed its way, Archives officials said. Deputy archivist Lewis Bellardo brought up the problem confronting archivists during a speech to members of the Association for Federal Information Resources Managers in Washington.
Do Not Sell My Personal Information
When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.
Manage Consent Preferences
Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active
We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.
Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies
Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link
If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.
Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.
Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.
If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.
Cookie List
A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:
Strictly Necessary Cookies
We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.
Functional Cookies
We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.
Performance Cookies
We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.
Sale of Personal Data
We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.
Social Media Cookies
We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.
Targeting Cookies
We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.