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.
The benefits of past performance have been oversold
The jewel in the crown of contracting reinvention is the widespread use of past performance information in vendor selection. Some say that past is prologue; the reinventors agree. They believe that rating the quality of performance for completed contracts will predict the quality of future performance by the same contractor.
Voice Power lets users vocally guide commands on their PCs
It's handy for surfing the Internet and customizing application launches. You control browser features in Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator by speaking your commands. The package also has value for users with mobility problems or who are keyboard-illiterate. The package for Microsoft Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0 comes with a comfortable headset, microphone and speaker. Providing a Sound Blaster- compatible sound card is up to the user.
Make GPRA requirements high-level activity
Remember the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993? It is supposed to be one of the drivers of improved program management in the federal government, but we don't hear much about it these days. Either programs are already being managed effectively, other things have become more important or no one is doing anything particularly dramatic.
Ruling poses questions about electronic records
What is the status of deleted e-mail messages under the Freedom Of Information Act? That is, can a deleted e-mail message be obtained through a FOIA request? That is one of many problems presented by the still-new institution of electronic mail. British Columbia information and privacy commissioner David Flaherty's decision of December 1995 is instructive, if somewhat unsatisfying.
Dream up your perfect PC, and perhaps have your dream come true
When users ask me which PC to order, many think they have to take whatever they can get for a certain price. Federal buyers who specify dozens or hundreds of office PCs know better. But others who occasionally order a few PCs from a General Services Administration schedule contract do need advice.
OMB documents pave the way to explore electronic commerce
Agencies working to clear a way for electronic commerce via the Internet have good starting points in a pair of Office of Management and Budget reports to Congress. The documents, An Assessment of Current Electronic Commerce Activities and Procurement and Electronic Commerce for Buyers and Sellers: A Strategic Plan for Federal Electronic Purchasing and Payment, appear in hypertext on the World Wide Web at http://policyworks.gov/epic.
Canvas delivers crisp technical drawing tools
The package can do basic desktop publishing or photo editing, but its strength lies in technical drawing tools you sometimes don't get even in computer-aided design software. The program comes on multiple CD-ROMs with 20,000 images, 5,000 symbols and hundreds of pages of documentation. It is a technical graphics publisher in the same sense that Adobe PageMaker is a text publisher.
GSA: Contract out IT work if it makes sense
Whether government employees like it or not, federal agencies are turning increasingly to vendors to manage their information systems. A new report from the General Services Administration's Information Technology Management Practices Division concluded that for many projects, outsourcing is a good idea. By relying on contractors, the report said, agencies can focus on the regulatory tasks for which they were created.
PC MacLAN unites the two big-name OSes
Microsoft Corp. may have defeated Apple Computer Inc. in the war for the business desktop, but there are refugees on both sides. All-Macintosh offices go into painful contortions when they add PCs to their mix, and vice versa. The neglected issue of cross-platform networking has become critical. Last fall, Microsoft's Bill Gates and Apple's Steve Jobs finally promised to bring their operating systems closer together, but someone beat them to the punch.
The complex Mathematica now comes with a friendlier interface
Did you hate math in school but now need it at work? Mathematica is for you as much as for engineers and scientists who feel at home with numbers. Users have come to regard their PCs as word processors, database hosts or graphics generators. Most of us forget that computers were designed to be number crunchers. Wolfram Research never forgot. I would not have recommended Mathematica for mainstream professionals until this version.
Fixing date codes is no game, but one can help you prepare
The year 2000 problem is no game--except in this case. Future Media's Uh-Oh, programmed like the text-based, dragon-chasing adventures made famous by the now-defunct Infocom in the early 1980s, pits players against a different kind of monster: the year 2000 software crisis. Although federal employees are not supposed to play games at work, Uh-Oh is so precise and so sprinkled with year 2000 information, that it is a potential training tool. It's just a
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