Try GovNews to get your agency EFOIA-compliant
And now, a new crisis arises in the form of your agency Freedom of Information Act officer. He drops by to ask about putting up an electronic reading room by fall. Passed last year, the Electronic Freedom of Information Act mandates that thousands of new documents be available for the public to browse online. Your FOIA office is clueless on how to do this, and you don't know who will do it or how to pay
Travelers use GPS map for accurate guidance
They can always stop and ask for directions, assuming they find someone who gives coherent directions. But what do they do in remote areas or halfway between interstate exits? What if they're investigating a disaster area where road signs have burned or washed away? The answer just might be DeLorme's Tripmate global positioning and map system, and it won't even cost very much if your employees already travel with notebook computers.
Shark swims circles around floppies
Large enough to hold many average text documents, the floppy's storage space hasn't changed, but demands for storage have ballooned. Many portable removable media options available today provide more storage but at the price of easy use. For instance, they generally require drives that are not integrated into the notebook and need independent power supplies. It becomes a balancing act between how much extra storage is necessary and how much a user wants to carry.
IMPAC card's not for everyone
Many contracting officers and information technology managers believe the government's IMPAC credit card quickly gets them the latest products in small, affordable chunks. But the card's buying limit of $2,500 lessens agency buying power, said Thomas Boswell, acquisition team leader for the Education Department's chief information officer. Boswell said sometimes volume buys from large contracts are cheaper, although spot pricing on General Services Administration schedule contracts does let vendors cut prices.
All parties reach consensus on FTS 2001 RFP
The 30-day delay gave GSA time for what GSA administrator David J. Barram described as a "consensus-forging process." The final version includes refinements in the procurement strategy for both long-distance and local telephone service, worked out in April meetings between GSA officials, congressional committee staff members and vendors. Everyone got something in the compromise. Vendors received a streamlined bidding process and a one-year forbearance on competition from optional services. Congress got assurances that prices would continue to
Visioneer's scanning software sets the standard, if imperfectly
Now Visioneer has turned this utility into a standalone product, PaperPort Deluxe. No matter what TWAIN-compliant imaging device you have, you can use PaperPort Deluxe to organize scanned images-documents, business cards, photos-and make special links to transfer them to applications as needed. I tested PaperPort Deluxe with a Gateway 2000 Inc. P5-200XL computer running Microsoft Windows 95 and a Hewlett-Packard Co. ScanJet 5p scanner.
OMB tightens reins on CIOs
Pushing hard on capital planning for information technology, OMB late last month asked agencies to submit IT program status reports by May 1. OMB director Franklin D. Raines on April 25 sent a memo to the heads of the 28 cabinet-level departments and major independent agencies asking them to identify capital planning achievements. He also asked that they update OMB on any IT organizational changes and describe their chief information officers' responsibilities.
It's neck-and-neck for small MMX-makers as Intel's lead evaporates
Now another important component is about to take a price hit, so we can look forward to lots more power at last year's prices-or less. Intel Corp.'s Pentium MMX chip will be a boon to heavy multimedia users as well as average buyers who'll find bargains on non-MMX systems because of market pressure from next-generation microprocessor introductions.
Some agencies want to set their own pay scales
In years past, a uniform civil service pay scale existed throughout government. It had locality pay to level the bumps between high-cost areas such as New York and low-cost areas such as Arkansas. Favored agencies with missions considered attractive and important, such as the Defense Department, were yoked into a single harness with agencies performing more mundane activities, such as the Office of Personnel Management or the General Services Administration, and with agencies disdained in
AID wasted $70 million on systems, IG reports
The AID IG's report said the agency wasted the money trying to design and deploy the New Management System. NMS has created more problems than it has solved since being deployed Oct. 1, said the report signed by IG Everette B. Orr. The main problems are managerial not technical, the IG concluded. "To a large extent, this problem exists due to underlying organizational and management deficiencies that allow substandard IRM practices to continue despite high risks
Beware bad GovNews
I'm talking about the GovNews section of the UseNet. Like-minded individuals have been exchanging data and holding diatribes for years via UseNet. It encompasses more than 20,000 interest groups, including 200 government groups. Plans now are under way for a newsgroup to carry Federal Register posts, with filters to prevent spam postings.
DataViz translator ends binary Babel
After all, most PC programs today have import and export filters for competing applications. And a networked PC running Corel WordPerfect can easily open word processing files created on an Apple Macintosh and saved on the network. But in some situations, DataViz Inc.'s Conversions Plus makes sense. It translates between PC and Macintosh programs in either direction, and from one PC application format to another. It can handle word processing, database, spreadsheet and some graphics files.
Navy sub is virtual-for now
Electric Boat Corp. won't build the NSSN until next year, but it's already swimming in uncharted waters. The entire sub has been built virtually through computer-aided design, making it the undersea answer to the Boeing Corp.'s CAD-developed 777 airplane. The 777 was the first commercial aircraft totally developed using CAD, but a modern, nuclear-powered attack submarine is much more complex.
Cyberis rattus maximus is hightailing it to Lagos after office e-mail fiasc
The Rat and his minions were faced with a Herculean task: upgrading the agency's e-mail system before morning. He had seen this coming. There had been a rash of standards talk at the last meeting with the agency chief information officer, and his boss had come back with that gleam in his eye that said, "I've just committed us to being the test bed."
DFAS finds multifunction app
He said he didn't need a "killer piece of flowcharting software" that could perform motion and simulation modeling. Instead, Guarino, an organizational development consultant with the Defense Finance Accounting Service's Human Resources Office found what he wanted in Micrografx Inc.'s ABC Flowcharter 4.0. At DFAS, users analyze different functions with network and organizational charts, checklists and other charts. Some of the service's re-engineering projects rely on timelines, spokes and Venn diagrams.
Mandatory EC clock is ticking
Before long, they will have no choice. The first step in the government's move to mandatory EC is the Central Contractor Registry (CCR), where vendors must register by Oct. 1 if they want to do business with Uncle Sam. So far, only about 6,000 companies appear in the registry, despite the fact that "the 800-pound gorilla has spoken," said Jim Gordy, lead software engineer for the DISA registry. "This is not for negotiation," Gordy said. "The laws
A reformer's primer: Zen and the fine art of buying computers
There is, however, one nagging question: Is the process better? To answer this knotty question I contacted the great Zen Master. He invited me to record a conversation for GCN with a devout pupil on that very topic. I now take you to the temple of the great Zen Master, who has posed this question to his devout pupil: If government procurement were a goose, would it fly north or south in the winter?
Entry-level HP scanner drops resolution and price by half
The small, flatbed color unit scans at half the resolution, 300 dots per inch, but it's also about half the price and easier to install and run. Although the software lacks precise control, I'm happy to see an easier interface. The scanner comes with its own UltraSCSI adapter that fits an EISA slot. The primary TWAIN_32 application is HP's PictureScan Task Manager.
Java jihad against the infidels at Microsoft doesn't quite convince
Java at the enterprise level dangles several promises: Truly open computing, sharply lower client administration costs, big savings in total cost of ownership, rapid development and deployment, fuller use of legacy systems and better security. Open computing, or open systems if you will, has long been the dream of Unix and every other recent operating system from OS/2 to NextStep and Microsoft Windows NT. But I don't believe we're any closer to open computing than we've
Constrain Web searches to free yourself from muddling through muck
I know, it's not very catchy. But it works. Here's how. Constraining can help tweak the way you use Internet search engines, giving you a dozen good hits instead of 2,000 pointers to documents that vaguely resemble your topic. Directing the search engine toward words contained in a particular Hypertext Markup Language tag is an underutilized constraining tool. In a normal search, only the regular text of the document, not the text inside HTML tags, is
Do Not Sell My Personal Information
When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.
Manage Consent Preferences
Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active
We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.
Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies
Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link
If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.
Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.
Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.
If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.
Cookie List
A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:
Strictly Necessary Cookies
We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.
Functional Cookies
We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.
Performance Cookies
We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.
Sale of Personal Data
We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.
Social Media Cookies
We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.
Targeting Cookies
We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.