Pentagon Nixes program that favored SDBs for telecon work
In an anticlimactic end to one of the most bitterly opposed contracting policies in recent years, last month the Pentagon eliminated its 10 percent evaluation preference program for small, disadvantaged businesses (SDBs) that provide DOD with long-distance telephone lines and circuits. Eleanor Spector, director of Defense procurement, issued the final rule. The decision was not a surprise. Spector said this spring she probably would cancel the preference for long-haul telecom buys handled by the Defense Information
With smart cards, FMS moves $80 billion a month on its net
Treasury officials are trying to sort out their changing roles in a nation that depends more and more on non-paper money. Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin has appointed a task force to weigh the impact of electronic cash and 'smart" payment cards on Treasury as the sole producer of currency. "Every Treasury bureau has an interest in smart cards," said George Munoz, Treasury's chief financial officer. The credit card-size devices store data in protected memory on microchips.
Now a solid tool, Visual Basic's poised to become a cult classic
Visual Basic, one of the most popular development tools ever to hit shrink-wrap, has eased a generation of custom application programmers into the Windows environment. At the same time, it spawned a whole industry of add-on tools. Detractors call Visual Basic a toy language without the depth or cross platform portability for enterprise work. Although it's come a long way from its first release, the product hasn't been upgraded since Version 3.0 way back in 1993.
Defense Department Briefs
The Defense Information Technology Contracting Office last month nixed plans to hold a separate cellular telephone buy and instead will use a contract planned by the General Services Administration. DITCO, which will continue to work closely with GSA on the procurement, transferred its Joint Wireless Procurement request for proposals to GSA.
Digital signatures: GSA tosses a hot potato back to NIST lab
Digital signatures are what the government needs for electronic commerce, but a way to use on-line John Hancocks remains unresolved and agencies shouldn't expect any help before 1997. Responsibility for a prototype on which agencies would model their digital signature applications has passed back and forth between the General Services Administration and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. NIST officials agreed last year to build a pilot system. GSA took over the effort this spring.
DOD gets ready to abandon old WWMCCS
The Defense Department is planning the mother of all system cutovers for December. ^^DOD will pull the plug on its most critical joint-services data network, the Worldwide Military Command and Control System (WWMCCS), and replace it with the Global Command and Control System (GCCS). The transition is so sensitive that DOD won't disclose the exact date of the switch, lest an opportunistic foe try to exploit any hitches.
Measure performance with Spec95
Try on some new Specs before looking at your next Unix or Open VMS workstation. The System Performance Evaluation Corp.'s new Spec95 benchmark suite has replaced the 1992 Spec tests of integer and floating-point computing performance. The updates will be administered by the National Computer Graphics Association of Fairfax, Va.
Systems folks facing furloughs just like other federal workers
Federal information technology workers can expect no special treatment if the president and Congress cannot resolve their budget differences or work out a temporary funding arrangement by month's end. If the government shuts down Oct. 1, the decision on who will be furloughed and who will continue on the job is being left to each department, and there are no special requirements involving the continued operation of government systems.
Tales of the crypto
In a welcome sign of realistic thinking, the administration has backed off its rigid approach to encryption and data security policy. To underscore this change, the Defense Department and General Services Administration established a security infrastructure program management office. The SI-PMO should help move the crypto debate from its semi-religious grounds to more practical ones.
Defense Department Briefs
Loral Corp. won one of five Air Force contracts to develop a prototype for the Integrated Maintenance Data System. IMDS is intended to absorb several legacy maintenance systems starting in late 1997. Under a nine-month, $500,000 contract, Loral's Federal Systems Group will design an architecture for a single system and develop a method for integrating data from systems such as the Core Automated Maintenance System/Reliability and Maintainability Information System. CAMS/REMIS is one of several Air
Troubled AF systems are kept alive by 'generous' lawmakers
Congressional meddling and slow Air Force progress on a new aircraft maintenance system have left the service's wing units with a trio of old, unreliable systems that will not be replaced before 1997. Evidence of the ongoing support for the problem-plagued systems is buried in the House and Senate fiscal 1996 Defense appropriations bills. Both the House and Senate added roughly $28 million in unrequested funds to the bills for the three old systems and
It still can't read, but Newton MessagePad's a great organizer
The first time I wrote "Testing" on the Newton MessagePad 120, it decided I meant "Entire." My second attempt was successful, except the capital T appeared as t. Handwriting recognition--or the lack of it--has brought undeserved ridicule onto Apple's personal digital assistant. When I looked beyond the writing on the screen, I found the best personal information management software I've seen on any platform.
OMB gears up for year 2000's date shift
HERSHEY, Pa.--The Office of Management and Budget is drafting guidelines to ensure that the turn of the century does not turn into a government computing catastrophe. Bruce McConnell, chief of OMB's Information Policy Branch, said agencies need to start altering the calendar dates in their computer programs to handle the change for the year 2000.
10OMB: Agencies must close small data sites
HERSHEY, Pa.--With new marching orders from the Office of Management and Budget, agencies must consolidate government data centers to close about half of them, or roughly 100 centers, by June 1998. OMB plans to release the final plan before month's end. The new OMB bulletin will require all agencies to compile data center inventories by March 1 and to develop consolidation strategies by next June.
DOE picks Intel to Build teraflops machine
By the end of 1996, the Energy Department's Sandia National Laboratory plans to hit one of supercomputing's big targets: 1 trillion floating-point operations per second. Sandia has a $46 million agreement with Intel Corp. to build a teraflops machine containing more than 9,000 CPUs. It will be Intel's first supercomputer based on the new P6 chip, soon to succeed the popular Pentium once known as the P5.
Existing rules for fed records apply to e-mail
The new rule on preserving e-mail as a federal record is pretty simple: Use the same guidelines you would follow for any other document. That's the bottom line for the National Archives and Records Administration's new e-mail records rule. What it means is that users will be the government's primary electronic records-makers and managers.
Thomas' promises unfulfilled, users of House Web site complain
Heralded eight months ago as the people's information superhighway ramp to Congress, the House's Thomas World Wide Web site is getting mediocre grades from users. Although generally popular, serving nearly 1 million users each month since its January launch, Thomas fails to allow those outside the Beltway equal access to political insiders, users said.
Dole leads race, is first to file contributor data on CD-ROM
In every presidential election, for each presidential candidate, Federal Election Commission workers spend hours verifying campaign finance reports against paper copies of thousands of donation checks. This year, the painfully slow process will stop for a handful of candidates. Sen. Robert Dole's presidential campaign is the first to submit the contributor information to the FEC on CD-ROM. The FEC also expects President Clinton and Patrick Buchanan to submit their contribution information on CD-ROM.
Out-of-the-box is just the beginning for new federal PCs
Most of the time, government PCs work properly from the first power-on. But they'll probably see at least one upgrade before the first user lays a finger on the keyboard, according to federal readers who answered GCN's exclusive survey on PC reliability. It's normal to customize a standard PC bundle; all but two respondents had added at least one item to their orders. Extra memory topped the list, followed by network interface cards, CD-ROM drives
Fed's problems with PCs start with how they're bought
A computer can be a nightmare long before it lands on the desk, government users said in an exclusive GCN survey of computer reliability. How you buy can be just as important as what you buy, they told us. That's because a federal PC's origins affect it throughout its working life. A well-managed purchase and good vendor relations lead to responsiveness later when problems arise. Conversely, bureaucratic procurement can make that difficult or impossible, government
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