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.
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.
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