Agencies lag in E-FOIA efforts
Plagued by limited funds, personnel and resources, agencies have found that although the Freedom of Information Act may be going electronic, many government documents are not. An informal GCN survey of 19 agencies found seven had not yet met E-FOIA's November mandate that agencies create an online reading room for frequently requested documents and document indexes.
VRCreator helps novices, experts create virtual-reality scenes at a low price
VRCreator lets you design World Wide Web pages, online presentations or training programs in which users can walk through and manipulate objects. VRCreator follows the Virtual Reality Modeling Language 2.0 standard. A VRML tool is to virtual reality as word processing is to text reports with embedded graphics, or as Hypertext Markup Language programming is to hypertext documents.
House date code watchers shine light on selves
Some members, House computer specialists and the Inspector General's Office are complaining that the work has been slow so far. They cautioned that if House leaders do not commit adequate financial and political capital to the project, the work may not be finished on time. The House's slow progress with the year 2000 problem is attributable to many factors, said House staff members familiar with the issue.
New Defense CIO will weave IT, buying
Gansler, former director of Tasc Inc. of Arlington, Va., was sworn in Nov. 10 as DOD's new acquisition and technology chief. The same day, Defense Secretary William Cohen announced plans to implement DOD reforms, including a reorganization of the office of the assistant secretary of Defense for command, control, communications and intelligence that gave Gansler CIO responsibilities as well.
This year, larger LCD screens on portable computers will rule
Flat-panel LCD displays have transistors built right into the screen from cheap, amorphous silicon splattered on the glass. They aren't very good transistors, but they do the job. The active-matrix class of LCD displays has behind-the-screen control circuits made of slices of crystalline silicon, just like memory and other chips.
Get hip, cop some more e-mail accounts--you know what I'm sayin'?
You too could probably use a second or third account for times when your mail server is down or you can't easily get into your mail on the road. The newest free e-mail accounts are available from the World Wide Web site at http://www.yahoo.com. Other free mailbox sources such as Juno, Hotmail and RocketMail have been available for some time.
Project managers get a hand
KnowledgePlan 2.0 from Software Productivity Research of Burlington, Mass., measures three variables in software development--cost, quality and schedule--using a knowledge base the company has built over years of software consulting. Unlike its Checkpoint predecessor, KnowledgePlan requires no expert knowledge of how software function points relate to programmer productivity. "To get this into lots of hands, we needed to simplify the interface and put in more wizards," company president Charles Douglis said.
FAR Part 15 rewrite leads to confusion as much as conclusion
I am of two minds about the revised Part 15 of the Federal Acquisition Regulation. For that matter, the new rule seems to be of two minds. It points in opposite directions on several important issues. The schizophrenic nature of the new regulation appears in its first change. According to the rewrite, "All contractors and prospective contractors shall be treated fairly and impartially." So far, so good.
FAA corrects system bug, averts holiday travel crisis
FAA recently found and corrected a date-sensitive bug that would have brought the Enhanced Traffic Management System (ETMS) to a halt Nov. 2. "What we learned with this problem will be invaluable to us as we work on the year 2000 problem," said Bob Voss, FAA's chief of air traffic management.
NIH gives long-distance care
That's the task of a telemedicine project in the Information Systems Department at NIH's Warren Grant Magnuson Clinical Center. NIH set up the center in 1948 to bring patient care closer to its research facilities. Now videoconferencing has put the clinic in touch with other research centers, and remote doctors and their patients in touch with NIH experts.
SSA posts date code help
A date code database, developed by the Social Security Administration, will open for browsing Dec. 1, SSA officials said this month. The home page for the site, at http://y2k.policyworks.gov, is active now. "We are doing a lot of testing in the federal government and thought this could be a way to share that information," said Kathleen Adams, SSA assistant deputy commissioner for systems.
Biz opportunity knocks online
"This type of thing is not unusual in industry,'' said Michael O'Hara Garcia, chief information officer for the Commerce Department agency. "We wanted to get a system to match contracts with minority businesses that could fulfill them.'' In the past, local minority development offices would try to find out about contracts and alert businesses, Garcia said.
Agencies push IMPAC IT buys to new heights
Charges on the popular federal Visa card grew to more than $4.8 billion from $2.9 billion in fiscal 1996, and transactions rose to 11.5 million from 7.3 million in 1996, according to the U.S. Bank of Minneapolis. The bank's subsidiary, Rocky Mountain Bank Card System, issues the cards through a General Services Administration program.
Congress threatens a strategic plan redo
Originally, the GPRA called for submission of the plans every three years. But House leaders said the plans are inadequate and need fixes sooner. "Most agencies do not seem to know where they are, where they are going or how to tell if their programs are improving the nation in tangible ways," House Majority leader Richard Armey (R-Texas) said.
Census counts on doc system
"With all the documents that Census has converted into electronic form, there's a strong need for such systems," said Janette Mon, a project manager at the Economic Planning and Coordination Division in Suitland, Md. The division conducts an economic census every five years and compiles monthly, quarterly and annual updates on business activity in the construction, manufacturing, minerals, retail, service and wholesale industries.
CEMT hits a home run with its domain name registration services
CEMT, part of the General Services Administration, took over registration services for all .gov addresses Oct. 1. Since then, it's had about 60 inquiries about new .gov names. The online registration forms appear on the World Wide Web at http://registration.fed.gov. Obviously, it's not an overwhelming volume of requests that makes this effort a success. There are only about 500 .gov domain names. But the service offers something that wasn't available back when contractor Network Solutions
Download files without bandwidth bother
Many new users limit themselves to the graphically presented information on the Net. As they gain experience at finding information, however, they grow impatient with bandwidth-wasting and time-wasting graphics, sounds and animations. They start getting into protocols. This article is not about the Internet protocols referred to collectively as TCP/IP, which are so technical that fooling around with them is like trying to modify your modem.
Court ruling will lead to broader records storage
GRS 20 was issued in August 1995 by the National Archives and Records Administration to cover the disposition of electronic records. The controversy leading to the court case was over provisions that let agencies print electronic documents, file the hard copy as the official record and delete the electronic version.
Use ColorSafe1.1 filter plug-in to draw up Web-safe palettes
I soon discovered that World Wide Web browsers such as Mosaic, Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer can use only 216 distinct colors out of a 256-color palette--and not the most visually pleasing ones, either. When you design a page that has a color not in the 216, what users see varies depending on their browsers and platforms.
Norton's Uninstall Deluxe deals with pesky, misplaced apps
Microsoft Windows Dynamic Link Library files don't want to disappear, executable files can't be removed and links won't let go. All that misbehavior was supposed to cease under Microsoft Windows 95 and Windows NT, which have a Registry file that's like a Motor Vehicles Department for computer applications. When a Win95 or NT application is installed, it makes entries about itself in the Registry file so the operating system supposedly knows everything it needs to
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