Schools and libraries become inexpensive Net service providers
In several states, a movement is afoot to require telephone companies to offer a range of telecommunications services, including Internet access, at reduced rates. Michigan Gov. John Engler recently signed a law requiring that those services be provided at cost to school districts. An interesting side angle is that the schools can buy Integrated Services Digital Network, T1 Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line and other broadband services without restrictions on reselling or sharing the bandwidth with
Court of Federal Claims dispenses just rulings so far
There have been a few surprises. Nearly all the protesters are small to midsize companies. Moreover, in several cases, the court has acted as a court of appeals, reviewing a protest previously decided, at least in part, by the General Accounting Office. An important recent decision is CCL Inc. vs. United States. The case resulted from the consolidation of far-flung military data processing into a group of megacenters run by the Defense Information Systems Agency.
DISA revamps COE training
DISA has been conducting three-day classes on the fundamentals of the DII COE only since August, but the agency wants out of the education business. "It outstrips any of our estimates on demand, and it's not our mission in the first place," said Don Black, head of new customer development at DISA's Center for Computer Systems Engineering.
McHale retires from government work
McHale, chief of the Scientific Information and Data Systems Branch at the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), retired from government late last year. The computer scientist will now devote much of her time to a lifelong love--natural sciences. McHale volunteers at the National Zoo in Washington, where she can be seen dipping her hand into the Think Tank, a petting zoo for sea life, and emerging with a creature to
Common patient data is key to VA, DOD project
The four partners will participate in the Government Computer-based Patient Record (GCPR) project that VA and DOD began earlier in the winter. The team plans to release a final statement of objectives this summer after receiving vendor comments, said Lt. Col. Rosemary Nelson, deputy program manager for the Composite Health Care System II.
NASA hooked on commercial shuttle robots
Replace John Glenn with a robot? That might seem far-fetched today. But NASA wants to use more robots aboard spacecraft in the not-too-distant future, and it's testing candidates now. The Mars Pathfinder proved last summer that robots built with off-the-shelf computer equipment could accomplish successful space missions, opening the floodgates for a new generation of NASA robots--including Ranger, Pathfinder's likely successor.
The furry one finds time-share is better than taking Notes
Again the cyberrodent braved Lotus Development Corp.'s surreal conference while the ratlings and Mrs. Rat cut loose to terrorize Mickey, Shamu and other theme park denizens. The Rats arrived in Orlando, Fla., a few days early to spend some quality time together before the head of the family had to submerse himself in the latest tips and tricks for Domino development and Defense Message System administration. Being on a limited budget, the Rat also subjected
MaxSpeed takes new tack on thin-client networking
A thin-client, fat-server network ideally delivers PC ease of use and robustness as well as administrative and cost benefits. Citrix Systems Inc.'s WinFrame is probably the best-known software server for thin clients, but it's a bit much for a small office or workgroup. MaxSpeed Corp. is trying something different. Instead of connecting to a server through a network, the MaxSpeed client connects to the server through a specialized VGA card.
Agencies worry about future of DEC's OpenVMS
Agencies have been running VMS ever since Digital introduced the original 32-bit VAX 11/780 minicomputer 20 years ago. Many federal applications still rely on VMS, now called OpenVMS, and systems managers said they don't want to move those applications any time soon. Digital officials have rushed to assure OpenVMS users that the OS is key to Digital's enterprise strategy and that Digital will continue to support it along with Microsoft Windows NT and Digital Unix.
LantraServer presents more remote-access options
Large enterprises have multiple access routes and platforms to consider. Small workgroup or departmental networks running Microsoft Windows NT or Unix present almost as many choices. The GCN Lab took a look at Stallion Technologies' LantraServer, a hardware-software combination that relies on Windows NT Server's Remote Access Server (RAS) module.
IRS' Gross to leave April 1, says he's reached his goals
Gross said he will leave his post April 1 to work with a nonprofit organization outside Washington. The announcement came only days after new IRS commissioner Charles Rossotti testified on Capitol Hill about a reorganization of the agency and discussed his ideas about the tax systems modernization effort. Gross in the fall had unveiled a new modernization strategy and more recently a draft solicitation for a lead contractor to oversee the effort.
As hardware value increases, prices go down, down, down
TigerDirect sells fully loaded 200-MHz systems with IBM Corp.'s Pentium-equivalent 6x86 chip for less than $1,000, including monitor and color printer. That's one sign of the price deflation going on concurrently with value inflation now in computer hardware. Even industry giant Compaq Computer Corp., apparently having decided that Intel Inside doesn't matter much in sub-$1,000 PCs, builds them with clone chips from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif., or Cyrix Corp. of Richardson, Texas.
Browse no more for Web analysis tools
What-you-see-is-what-you-get authoring packages make it easier to create Web pages with panache. But agency credibility suffers when site visitors keep tripping over broken links. Unless you do all the Web training and have full control, other webmasters who build pages that link to your agency site probably prefer page development tools other than yours.
Govt. needs more IT workers
As the global market for IT workers grows increasingly competitive, federal, state and local governments can't seem to attract enough of them. And sky-high salaries in the private sector are driving many government IT workers into corporate offices. "This has always been a problem. It's now an acute problem," said Justice Department chief information officer Mark A. Boster. "There's no such thing as DOJ stock options. So what do I offer? I offer a beginning
Vendors are unnerved by GSA's price-pushing
The pressure has gotten so intense that Cisco Systems Inc., the leading networking vendor, reportedly considered withdrawing from Multiple-Award Schedule contracts in favor of selling through other contract vehicles such as NASA's Scientific and Engineering Workstation Procurement II and the National Institutes of Health Electronic Computer Store II. But a Cisco manager denied the company would abandon the FSS program. "We're moving in the opposite direction," said Paul Cantwell, federal channel director for Cisco of
NASA uncovers sites unseen
The Mars Pathfinder mission generated some of the heaviest Web traffic ever seen, but officials checking specialized NASA sites have discovered it takes more than a Web server and a uniform resource locator to get information out to the intended audience. "I'm learning a tremendous amount," said Linda Porter, site curator for the Space Sciences Laboratory at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. "It's an extremely complicated problem that we're trying to work through."
Panasonic PanaFlat PF70 is flatter, sharper than the less expensive ToshibaTekBright
Panasonic's PanaFlat PF70 might have a cathode-ray tube, but its 15.9-inch viewable area is almost perfectly flat. The 0.24-millimeter slot pitch makes images quite clear. Red-green-blue controls are bar-shaped, and alignment is tight without distortion. The resolution reaches 1,600 pixels by 1,200 pixels. On-screen controls are the same jagged pictograms as on all Panasonic monitors for the last few years.
It's raining IP
It's good for DOD, and it's good for the IP market [GCN, Jan. 26, Page 1]. In buying a pure X.400 and X.500 system, Defense risked having a critical application set that was slightly out of the mainstream--and would slip further and further into the backwater. In agency after agency--indeed, in corporation after corporation--you find systems managers replacing everything from IBM Systems Network Architecture to Novell IPX with IP and Internet-inspired elements. In other words,
NARA fumbles with e-mail preservation policy
The resulting set of policies has been established largely by the desire of the Justice Department and the White House to prevail in litigation. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is responsible for records preservation issues, but it has played a secondary role, dancing to the tune played by the government's litigators. The rest of the agencies have been left to twist slowly in the wind.
HHS' flood of paper subsides
"We've cut costs by 50 percent from paper storage," said Linda A. Gibson, section chief of the Electronic Document Services Section at HHS in Rockville, Md. "A form is a form. Once you start automating, you need to review them and in some cases combine" or eliminate them. The department and its Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Food and Drug Administration, and National Institutes of Health all use forms to document internal actions and
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