DISA seeks small vendors for $350m megacenter buy
The Defense Information Systems Agency last week issued a request for proposals for a megacenter support acquisition worth up to $350 million. The five-year, multiple-award contract will be set aside for small, disadvantaged, minority and women-owned businesses and will feature a regional source selection process, said Lt. Gen. Albert Edmonds, DISA's director.
Donating fed computers to schools is no easy task
Many federal agencies have been generously donating old computers to schools and other charities. Unfortunately, problems abound with this well-intended effort to get the nation's schools on the Information Superhighway. Executive Order 12999, signed by President Clinton on April 17, calls for the transfer of excess federal computer equipment to schools and nonprofit organizations. The order describes its intent: to "streamline the transfer of excess and surplus federal computer equipment to our Nation's classrooms and encourage
Agencies milk the Web for help
Some agencies are turning to the World Wide Web for daily transactions such as issuing permits and accepting payments. "We're trying to discover how the Web can help us get our work done," said Chris Hopkins, senior technical specialist in the Bureau of Land Management's New Mexico office. Hopkins already has chosen the first transaction-based application he wants to get up and running on the Web. It will maintain lists of vendors that want to bid on
FTC turns Web on scammers
Investigators at the Federal Trade Commission are fighting fire with fire by launching an online campaign against pyramid scams. "We identified 500 sites on the World Wide Web as potential illegal pyramid scams," FTC lawyer Paul Luehr said. "And we don't think we found them all." FTC officials said pyramid sites and other scams are becoming an increasing problem on the Internet, where almost anyone can set up a Web page easily and inexpensively.
For Inauguration, your key to the city is a smart card
As he takes his Inauguration Day trip down Pennsylvania Avenue, President Clinton will lead a parade of smart card users. The General Services Administration, which provides the technical and security support services for the Inauguration, has outfitted Presidential Inauguration Committee members and White House employees with smart cards as part of its security and inventory management system.
Internet Phone takes you from chat room typing to real chatting
Internet Phone 4.0 is one of several software packages that digitizes audio and converts it to packets for conducting conversations across the Internet. The packages can deliver online directories and electronic whiteboarding with the bonus of drastically reduced long-distance charges-but only sometimes. For this kind of telephony to work well, all the callers must be permanently connected to the Internet, which is pretty unrealistic today.
An overrated threat
What I want to know is: If the hackers who busted into the Air Force's World Wide Web site were capable, as they claimed, of taking over the e-mail system, why didn't they spam the place? If, as they claimed, they could access top-secret data, why didn't they print out a page and send it to, say, Pierre Salinger?
EU privacy proposals pressure U.S.
Two ongoing policy processes in Europe have produced strikingly different reactions from American companies engaged in information-intensive activities. One deals with privacy and the other with databases. Watch carefully as the American information industry speaks out of both sides of its mouth. The first development is the European Union's data protection directive. Data protection is a European term for privacy of personal information. In 1995, the EU adopted a data protection directive designed to provide a
FAR Council issues a year 2000 amendment
To avoid a millennium meltdown, federal buying chiefs have created a new procurement rule ordering agencies to buy only those information technology products that are guaranteed to work into the next century. The Federal Acquisition Regulation Council has approved an interim rule that requires all government agencies to be sure that any commercial hardware or software products that they buy can perform date and time processing tasks after Dec. 31, 1999.
Half-size HP notebook earns full-size scores
The 334-pound OmniBook 800CT subnotebook squeezes in most of the goodies of a full-scale Microsoft Windows 95 notebook: 133-MHz Pentium chip, 16M RAM, 128-bit video controller and 1.3G hard drive. To stay under 4 pounds, it makes certain sacrifices: shorter battery life, a smaller keyboard and active-matrix display, and a mini-mouse on a Popsicle stick-like extension, which Hewlett-Packard introduced on subnotebooks in the early 1990s.
New protest venue promises seasoned bid dispute reviews
Congress giveth, and Congress taketh away. The Information Technology Management Reform Act swept away the bid protest jurisdiction of the General Services Administration Board of Contract Appeals. But in another law, Congress granted complete bid protest jurisdiction to a federal court, the Court of Federal Claims. This court has great promise as an expert and independent forum in which to air concerns about the bidding process.
Tecra 730CDT performs on par with 720, for less
I've written that the CPU on any computer-desktop or notebook-is not the component that most affects performance. The Toshiba Tecra 730CDT is an example of that. When all the GCNdex32TM benchmarks were done, neither I nor the evaluation database could tell much difference between the 730CDT and its older sibling, the Tecra 720CDT, a Reviewer's Choice [GCN, Aug. 5, 1996, Page 35]. But the 730CDT has a 150-MHz Pentium instead of a 133-MHz and a 2G
Data theft leads to arrest of 10 SSA employees
The Social Security Administration has fired 10 employees for stealing data from agency computers. The information was used to activate more than 1,000 stolen credit cards. "There is no place in our agency for employees like that," SSA spokesman Jerry Rieger said. "What they did was not representative of our employees."
Agencies miss Jan. 1 EDI goal
The president's deadline for agencies to use electronic commerce for most buys came and went on Jan. 1. Now the administration is re-evaluating its stance and revamping its plans for online buying. Originally, President Clinton had wanted all agencies to be using a government electronic data interchange network for the bulk of their procurement activities by this year. But the deadline passed with little fanfare and with most agencies still experimenting with different online buying techniques.
DOD builds Web weather station
At the outset of the Bosnian mission in late 1995, Air Force commanders wanted to send cargo planes from Germany into Bosnia. They went to their computers and checked the latest weather forecasts, which covered a 40-kilometer zone. Though the data was up to 12 hours old and based on scanty local observation, they decided to send the planes in. But the forecasts were insufficient, and an unexpected fog forced their return.
Looks, brains, brawn-Dell's OptiPlex line has it all
Apparently Dell Computer Corp. believes that what is on the inside is just as important as what is on the outside when it comes to its OptiPlex line of computers. When it introduced its Pentium Pro business machine, the GXpro, Dell also introduced a complete case and chassis redesign called OptiFrame. Featuring a recyclable case and an extremely well-designed interior, the Dell GXpro combined aesthetics, function and power.
Mr. Claws comes to town and ratlings hack merrily into the holidays
It was to have been a quiet holiday. At the Rat's household, in the interest of sanity, no Tickle-Me Elmos or Nintendo 64s appeared under the tree. With the ratlings home from school for almost two whole weeks, the last thing the Wired One wanted was to listen to them molest a Muppet or fight over whose turn it was to control Mario.
Send Netwide knuckle sandwiches and teach spammers manners
Is the spam hitting the fan on your e-mail system? Here are 10 tips to keep unwanted messages off your agency's desktops. As you may know, spam is the Internet term for unsolicited bulk e-mailings. It's not to be confused with Spam, Hormel's mysterious but popular canned meat product. Spamming is becoming an epidemic because of new products like Lightning Bolt, from Eunuchs Etc. of Albuquerque, N.M. Lightning Bolt is an e-mail generator and a scanner that
Large files travel EZFlyer in comfort
For graphics and desktop publishing professionals, removable hard drives can be a necessity these days. And plenty of other government users value removables for their security capability. If you want only to add more storage to your system, it's hard to justify a removable. Standard hard drives can do the job for less.
From Day 1, VAMC is paperless
June 26, 1995, was a historic day for Veteran's Affairs Department hospitals. On that day, the VA opened a medical center in West Palm Beach, Fla., that has never used paper charts. "I don't know of any other hospital in the world" without paper charts, said Irfan Shaikh, health information manager at the Florida medical center.
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