Browsers limber up only to clutter your drive, tracking mud
If you like to experiment with Microsoft's Internet Explorer or Netscape Communications' Navigator, you're familiar with the incredible flexibility of Web browsers today. Plug-in modules add even more flexibility, letting you view special files and sometimes full applications right inside your Web browser. This seems so practical and gee-whiz fun that most people ignore an important side effect--file management nightmares for your enterprise.
The buying detective finds out how to use a fee to cover costs
The Federal Middle-person Agency (FMpA) has announced the new fee schedule for access to government buying activities. King Oxnard, procurement detective, was dispatched to interview the head of FMpA. This is his exclusive report: KO: You are Constant Leigh Fleecum, acting director of FMpA, is that correct? CLF: Yes, and you're just in time to witness the unveiling of our agency's new logo, voila!
Veterinary Service takes waiver on DSS, embraces RSA instead
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is the first agency officially to exempt itself from the government's Digital Signature Standard to use commercial signature application. Instead of the mandatory DSS, the Veterinary Service at APHIS will rely on the digital signature program from RSA Data Security Inc. in Redwood City, Calif., already embedded in the forms application the service uses.
IT budgets approved, agencies go shopping
After seven months in budget limbo, agencies are poised to leap into a year-end IT shopping spree--for off-the-shelf items at least, vendors and industry analysts predict. But agencies are likely to keep some of their biggest information technology acquisitions on ice until late summer, when the General Services Administration Board of Contract Appeals finally cedes its jurisdiction over IT bid protests to the General Accounting Office.
A workstation broadens the Desktop V mix
With the award this month of the Desktop V contracts to Hughes Data Systems Inc. and Zenith Data Systems, the Air Force appears to have succeeded in stretching the customary definition of the PC requirements buy. Hughes will supply a 64-bit reduced-instruction-set-computing workstation and not a PC for its high-end desktop system. E.O. Knowles, president of Hughes Data Systems, told GCN his company bid a 166-MHz AlphaStation 200 4/166 from Digital Equipment Corp. for advanced
Large-screen PC not quite ready for conference room
The Destination Big Screen PC is looking for a place to go in the government market. With its 31-inch monitor that doubles as a television, jet-black Pentium CPU, wireless keyboard and remote mouse, the $3,499 Destination may revolutionize home computing. But the concept doesn't go far enough yet to spark a similar revolution in the conference room.
Overzealous criminal investigations abound
Everyone supports prosecution of a crook in the public contracting community--whether it is a corporate official who offers envelopes of cash or a public official who, while making big decisions about a contract, asks a would-be contractor for a job. But I see too many inappropriate and overzealous criminal investigations of government and industry people involving investigative tools and power more suited to busting La Cosa Nostra than your local software buyer or seller.
Hackers wreak havoc on systems
Ah, spring. The Rat, enjoying relief from the worst winter on record, has been observing the time-honored rites of the season: cherry blossoms, high pollen count and courtship rituals among phreakers and hackers. The Rat is taking advantage of the season to do some spring cleaning and change all his PIN numbers and passwords. A rodent can't be too careful in this dial-up, Webified world. Just ask New York's finest.
Olympic system will show NWS' mettle
The National Weather Service is using this summer's Olympic Games in Atlanta as a testbed for advanced forecasting technology. The Olympic Weather Support System, which will provide detailed forecasts for areas as small as a two-kilometers square, is an example of what NWS can do given the resources, said Lans P. Rothfusz, meteorologist in charge of the Olympic Weather Support Office in Peachtree City, Ga.
What's your take on CASE tools and the Win95 help screens
Is CASE closed? Federal data center managers haven't gotten much help from computer-aided software engineering tools on the year 2000 problem, caused by early Cobol programmers who never expected their software--or their computers--to be around in 2001. The ledger now seems to be nearly closed on CASE. Has anyone had a thoroughly good experience with a CASE tool? If so, please drop me a line at the address below.
Unsettled market
In one of the color flyers in my Sunday newspaper a couple of weeks ago, Page 4 showed a Hewlett-Packard Deskjet 600C printer for $249. On Page 9 of the same flyer, the same printer was $239. These days you never know when you're getting the best deal. The incident--symptomatic of the craziness of the PC market--somehow reminded me of the General Services Administration and how much energy it's putting into promoting the ""new'' Multiple-Award
Expect vendors to modify products slightly for agencies
The big winners in the latest round of procurement overhauls are surely sellers of commercial items. As defined by the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act last year, such items include commercial products modified to meet government needs and a few types of commercially offered services. Now new provisions, enacted as part of the Defense Authorization Act of 1996, will make it easier to buy and sell such items.
Treasury, GSA agree on FTS cutover plans
The Treasury Department and General Services Administration last week reached a broad accord on when and how Treasury users will shift to AT&T Corp.'s portion of the governmentwide FTS 2000 network. Sandra Bates, assistant commissioner for service delivery in GSA's Federal Telecommunications Service, said Treasury has agreed to move all its dedicated and consolidated locations using FTS 2000 switched voice services from Sprint Corp.'s Network B to AT&T's Network A by the end of next
For now, GSBCA still has jurisdiction over ADP bid protests
Agency attempts to challenge the jurisdiction of the General Services Administration's Board of Contract Appeals are premature. Agencies must abide the board's authority under the Brooks Act a bit longer. The Defense Commissary Agency and the National Library of Medicine both disputed the board's authority and asked it to set aside recent protests. The agencies made their cases on other grounds, but neither justified their arguments that the board lacked jurisdiction.
Timing is everthing for Intel's powerful multimedia chip
What a horrible thought--all those brand-new, 133-MHz Pentium machines you just ordered are about to go obsolete. Why? Because Intel Corp. has developed a super-multimedia Pentium chip with nearly 60 new instructions to multiply video and multimedia performance as much as fourfold. The multiprocessing capabilities of the Pentium MMX (multimedia extensions) chip aren't just for home game computers. What should you expect from the upcoming 200-MHz Pentium Pro MMX?
Two-thirds of CIO posts remain vacant
The government's new information technology management scheme takes effect in three months, but so far only five of the 15 Cabinet agencies have named chief information officers as mandated by law. President Clinton ignited the management make-over when he signed the 1996 Defense Authorization Act, which repealed the Brooks Act and eliminated the official IRM executive in each agency. The 1965 Brooks Act put GSA in charge of federal computer procurement and laid out an
Internet, Intranet, bandwidth, storage: The mantra is 'more'
Communications people have a herd mentality. Two years ago, at a NetWorld+Interop in Las Vegas I attended, all the vendors were reciting the ATM mantra. I remember sharing a bus ride from the hotel to the show with an Israeli visitor. I popped him the question everyone was asking: What's the silver-bullet application that will really launch asynchronous transfer mode? He looked at me incredulously. "It's already here," he said. "The Internet."
Easy-to-use Net tools might make us all page-building fools
Wouldn't it be great to just click on a button and make the word processing, spreadsheet, database and presentation files you've spent so many hours perfecting all Internet-ready for your agency's Web server? In its quest to become a player in the Internet market, Microsoft Corp. has released a set of free, downloadable tools to do that. They're so easy, even your boss can use them. You'll look like an expert in the Hypertext Markup
Go West, young Rat,and beware the Web bandwagoneers
The developer faithful made a pilgrimage on Tax Day, gathering in Los Angeles for Microsoft's TechEd conference. The city was waiting to greet them. One visitor nearly was carjacked at knifepoint, and the LA Convention Center's doors were cut open so computers could be stolen. It was as if IBM owned the town, the Rat mused.
They could be monitoring your every Web move
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU. That is a slogan from a world described by George Orwell in his book 1984. The watching was done by the Thought Police through the telescreen, a television monitor that received and transmitted simultaneously, observing every action of each individual within its sight. Orwell offered a chilling vision of a future world.
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