E-Rate Ripoffs
Arlene Ackerman, the San Francisco Independent School District's superintendent, didn't like the looks of a $50 million project proposal submitted for her approval shortly after her appointment in 2000. As she delved into the project application'made under a program known as E-Rate'Ackerman began a five-year journey into the sordid maze of a well-intentioned but disastrous effort to provide hard-pressed schools and libraries with access to broadband service.
Agencies close net on illicit use of government IT
When federal agents last month seized the office computer of a NASA official for allegedly trafficking in child pornography on the Internet, a key piece of evidence came from technology developed at the agency to identify that kind of content. A special agent in the computer crimes division in NASA's inspector general's office analyzed data captured by a Web activity monitoring application to build the case against NASA program executive James Robinson.
USAID implements wireless intrusion-prevention system
AirTight Networks provides technology to keep out eavesdroppers
Army announces ITES2 awards
Despite several lengthy delays caused by reviews and evalutions, the Army awarded 11 contracts today under its $20 billion Information Technology Enterprise Solutions-2 Services program.
Homeland IG takes FEMA to task
Homeland Security Department inspector general Richard Skinner concludes that the department's Federal Emergency Management Agency deserved much of the criticism it received in the media regarding its handling of the disaster.
W.Va. taps Medsphere to install VistA
By Bob Brewin Mesdsphere Systems Corp. said the State of West Virginian has awarded it a contract to install the company's open-source version of Department of Veterans Affairs VistA electronic health record (EHR) software in seven state-operated acute care hospitals, psychiatric hospitals and long-term care facilities
RFI issued for Budget Line of Business
The General Services Administration has released the final request for information for Budget Formulation under the three new Lines of Businesses Consolidation initiative ' three business days before the industry day.
IRS, Thomson Prometic strike deal for exam work
The Internal Revenue Service has awarded a 10-year, $12.5 million contract to Thomson Prometric Inc. to develop and administer the agency's special enrollment exam on a computer-based format.
UPDATED: NASA s new VOIP system crashes
A new VOIP telephone system at NASA headquarters sparked an outage that cut off computer network and phone service for hours.
Bentley Systems offers subscription software
The geographic information systems company said it hopes to interest local governments in licensing its software on an annual basis.
SIM city and the network
Bill Geimer, program manager in the Chief Information Security Office at the Agency for International Development, has a huge security problem.
Scrub Your Data, not Your Career
Tools such as Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel are wonderful ways to express information. But until the fruits of their labor are made public, users treat them like personal workspaces, which can lead to problems when data that wasn't intended for public consumption leaks out. <b><font color="CC0000">|GCN Lab</font color> Reviewer's Choice|</b>
Apple's New Dynamic Core Duo
The new Intel-based, dual-core iMac is a slick machine, and underneath the glitz and gloss beats the heart of a heavy-duty workstation. It's the first Apple desktop we have seen in years that we can comfortably recommend for general-purpose use in the government. <b><font color="CC0000">|GCN Lab</font color> Reviewer's Choice|</b>
WordPerfect-ly Impressive
Chances are you're a Microsoft Office shop. But some of you might still be running the WordPerfect suite. Or maybe, now that Microsoft is preparing its next version of Office, you're open to the possibility of a new product, rather than an upgraded one. WordPerfect Office X3 is Corel's latest in a long line of suites. We grabbed a copy of it in the GCN Lab and were not disappointed.
DHS Bug Hunt Returns Mixed Reaction
The results of a Homeland Security Department-funded bug hunt spanning 40 popular open-source programs has thus far met ambivalence from the open-source community. While many projects are using the results to improve their software, others are bemoaning the high number of false positives.
Tech Blog from GCN.com
Imagine you're a spammer getting ready to launch a spam campaign. It doesn't matter where you got your e-mail addresses, you know a chunk of them will be no good. Those messages are going to bounce back'and you don't want them bouncing back in your direction. So you substitute other, legitimate return addresses. One of them is Info@AFedAgency.gov.
Cybereye | Time to focus on security, not compliance
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Federal Information Security Management Act is not working. I am not a big fan of the A-through-F report cards handed out each year by the House Government Reform Committee, because they are not very meaningful indicators either of FISMA compliance or actual IT security posture. But after a five-year drumbeat of Ds and Fs, it's hard to argue that much real progress is being made.
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