VA soups up its hospital nets
The upgrade, moving briskly at about five sites per week, will give the health care agency enough processing power for the next two to three years, said Craig Neidermeier, director of contracts administration for the Veterans Health Administration in Birmingham, Ala. VA officials weighed alternatives to Windows NT, Neidermeier said, including Unix and Digital OpenVMS.
Speedier computing was their passion
PTO created its hall of fame in 1973 to acknowledge the creative spirit of America's top inventors. The Washington induction ceremony focused on the man who invented RAM and two inventors who made possible the early PC/AT computers and 286 processors. Robert Dennard was working for IBM Corp. when he invented the first one-transistor dynamic memory cell. Today, dynamic RAM is found in nearly every computer.
ADSL extends base network
It's all connected by "a very large, robust, fiber-optic intelligent hub network," said Frank Dawson, chief of Fort Bragg's Automation Division, and the Synchronous Optical Network backbone operates at 155 megabits/sec. "It does almost all of our connectivity, logistical to financial to personnel," Dawson said. But it made no sense to run such a big fiber-optic pipeline to the base's 48 scattered point-of-sale (POS) terminals, which use primarily text applications to exchange sales and inventory figures with
FootPrints extends reach of your help desk via TCP/IP
FootPrints, a problem-tracking and help desk package, has promise as a dark-horse entry in the crowded help desk field. UniPress Software Inc.'s FootPrints uses TCP/IP to follow the World Wide Web metaphor and do the same basic things LAN help desks do. With a Web-style help desk, technicians can economically support users on an intranet or anywhere around the globe via the Internet.
MAS contracts come together
But schedule vendors still are awaiting the final revisions to the government's policy for negotiating and managing MAS contracts. Starting Oct. 1, the General Services Administration will begin consolidating its MAS information technology contracts into a uniform acquisition program. Under the old MAS format, officials in GSA's Federal Supply Service negotiated separate contracts for items in different technologies and services groups. For example, the MAS Group 70 A contracts covered large systems products, and Group 70 B/C
There's lots of workspace on Cornerstone's monitor
My 17-inch Sony Trinitron monitor's slot-mask aperture made clear, crisp, vivid images. It became my favorite GCN Lab monitor. Then, a few weeks ago, a Cornerstone Color 45/101sf 19-inch monitor arrived, and suddenly my Trinitron seemed drab by comparison. The first thing to notice about the Cornerstone is its size, and not just that of the screen. The total dimensions are slightly bigger than the Trinitron's-something of a breakthrough.
When picking, be 100 percent positive Java speaks your language
As the rhetoric flies, you may be feeling disgusted enough to dump your coffee into the keyboard and go back to the days of tin cans and string. Don't get mad, get educated. Marketers woo government buyers with promises of what products can do. Decide first what you want to do before you ponder the hype.
GSA tips its hat to 1997's top trail bosses
GSA also honored three other trail bosses for special achievements at the agency's recent Trail Boss Roundup in Norfolk, Va. Established in 1988, Trail Boss is GSA's governmentwide education program for preparing senior information technology managers to handle major systems acquisitions. The program stresses team management concepts and open communications between government buyers and contractors.
Energy puts SGML to work
Energy's Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) recognized the value of SGML several years ago when it adopted the language as its standard for document exchange. Now Energy is laying the groundwork for a distributed multimedia archive that agency scientists and academic researchers can access from any desktop computer.
To make team reviews, come to Intelligent Consensus
Its 360-degree feedback, or multirater, methodology has two big advantages over the conventional assessment process. First, an evaluation probably will be more accurate because it isn't based on a single person's opinion. Second, the employee is more likely to take seriously an evaluation by several peers. Intelligent Consensus is in use at the Energy and Education departments and the U.S. Army Engineering and Support Center in Huntsville, Ala. It provides a relatively easy template to
Are the Feds courting uncivilized thoughts with private counsel?
Except in my profession. In almost every case, government-employed lawyers provide legal representation for federal agencies. Contracting officers must use the agency counsel assigned to them, and government lawyers, of course, must represent their agencies. This shotgun marriage makes for unhappy clients and unhappy lawyers. In the private sector, free choice insures that clients get the representation they want. And lawyers can walk away from clients who make unreasonable or unethical demands.
Next Microsoft OS has the feel of a browser
The Windows 95 upgrade, known as Windows 97 and expected in 1998, will include a World Wide Web browser. The company is releasing early code for Windows 97, code-named Memphis, and Internet Ex-plorer 4.0, code-named Lisa, for developers of products that will run under Win97. The GCN Lab got a look at the pre-alpha Memphis version and the first Lisa beta version. At this point, it is impossible to install them simultaneously and get a true
Senate seeks better Wang deal
Dissatisfied with a five-year services contract it awarded to Wang/I-Net Government Services in 1992, the Senate last year renegotiated the contract based on the fixed-priced model. The McLean, Va., company provides installation, maintenance, help desk, LAN administration and troubleshooting services for all Senate hardware and software. Senators buy their own equipment but rely on Wang/I-Net for support.
Middlemen could make online buying as safe as a walk in the mall
A new type of middleman-the online content provider-is emerging to coordinate buying, selling and payments. Value-added networks can still handle this kind of three-way interface, but increasingly it has become the domain of the content provider. For instance, the intermediary might be a World Wide Web site that hosts online catalogs and acts as a trusted third party for exchanging digital cash. I'm not talking about a cyber shopping mall but a specialty site that serves
QDR sidesteps request for more cyber warfare funds
Contrary to the recommendations of a November Defense Science Board report and a March intra-agency assessment done specifically for the QDR, the final version of the QDR did not address what the earlier reports called a multibillion-dollar budget shortfall in battlefield comm and information warfare. The Office of the Secretary of Defense conducts the QDR once every four years to assess the department's long-term requirements and near-term strategies. Its recommendations serve as a blueprint for DOD
Move over, Joe Industry; feds buy latest IT just like you do
Acting for the aircraft carrier group, the Space and Naval Warfare Command bought 100 Digital Equipment Corp. 200-MHz Pentium Pro machines from the BPA, which was based on Digital's General Services Administration schedule contracts. Larry Core, project manager for the Tactical Advanced Computer Office in San Diego, said the new PCs can accept up to two processors and the servers can be four-way.
LaserTools develops new, thrifty printer tricks
But LaserTools Corp. has an inexpensive utility called Power PrintCache that can dramatically expand the abilities of almost any printer, save time and cut consumables up to 50 percent. LaserTools officials told me that independent research shows about 75 percent of business printing is for internal document review, drafts and personal file copies.
Make staff evaluations more manageable
Fairness is mandatory but hard to achieve. And many technical managers feel less than confident about their writing ability for anything longer or more formal than e-mail. Performance appraisal software helps strengthen both of these weaknesses. Online guides and integrated performance logs provide data for balanced evaluations, and with a step-by-step approach, the software organizes and helps document the reports.
Administration to relax digital signature policy
Officials at the National Institute of Standards and Technology are gathering public comments aboutadding commercial public-key algorithms to DSS, which now prescribes the Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA). The Commerce Department in 1994 issued DSS as a mandatory Federal Information Processing Standard for verifying the senders and contents of electronic messages.
GAO finding: Defense needs financial remedy
The problem: DOD does not have accurate information for managing its $250 billion annual budget and more than $1 trillion in assets, GAO auditors said. Making matters worse, DOD investments in modern computer systems and networks have neither reduced operating costs nor improved performance, said the report, Financial Management: Improved Reporting Needed for DOD Problem Disbursements.
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