BEA bids adieu to trusty--sort of--mainframe
Lee Price, acting undersecretary of Commerce for economics and statistics pulled the plug on the dinosaur, a Honeywell 66/80 mainframe. It slowly fell quiet as the cooling fans spun down in various hardware components spaced throughout the cavernous computer room. A red trouble light began to blink as bureau technicians looked on.
NASA team tests switches, routers for Net's successor
BOSTON--The tools that make up the Next Generation Internet are not all vaporware. An entire NASA division is devoted to testing the technologies for the backbone of a future Internet 100 times faster than today's. The current focus of NGI testing is on routers and switches, said NASA computer specialist Paul Grams, who works with a team of NASA testers in the NGI Division at Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. The center is
FEDCAC will connect IT puzzle pieces
Ron Decker defines his new job as Washington's matchmaker. As the incoming administrator of the General Services Administration's Federal Computer Acquisition Center, Decker will be responsible for expanding FEDCAC and creating a local presence in the nation's capital. Unlike his predecessor, Stephen Meltzer, Decker will work in Washington. "Right now, most of FEDCAC's resources are in Boston, where we have had a very positive history with large contracts," he said. "But the truth is that
NOAA system tries to outpace Mother Nature -
You can't fight Mother Nature, but officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are using PCs to speed up their ability to keep ahead of her. NOAA is building a PC network to let forecasters send instant warnings to areas in danger of violent weather. The Radio Console Replacement System (RCS) will replace 1970s consoles that don't work with new NOAA systems.
FAA will replace system for small-plane tracking
FAA plans to use the Operational and Supportability Implementation System (OASIS) to store weather information and track warning messages for private aircraft. Under the 10-year OASIS contract, Harris of Melbourne, Fla., will replace the Model 1 Full Capacity (M1FC) mainframe computers at 61 large FAA sites and several small facilities.
HHS unit distills its IT wisdom into free booklet
The agency, part of the Health and Human Services Department, last month began distributing a self-assessment tool for high-tech upgrades and IT needs, to 2,900 community health care providers. It also will give the workbook to any government agency. Claude Earl Fox, HRSA administrator, said the 172-page booklet lets organizations that don't want to hire consultants examine IT needs on their own.
From a single workstation, keep tabs on nets anywhere
Federal agencies faced with managing global computer networks are turning to a new monitoring application that proves it's a small world after all. An agency's support staff could, say, use the app to monitor and sometimes fix malfunctioning routers in Guam, a burned-out terminal in San Francisco or a broken cable in Panama from one location using the Integrated Network Management System (INMS).
Applixware gives agency a Unix-to-Windows bridge
To ease cross-platform communications, the Forest Service is installing a Unix-compatible desktop automation package on 5,000 new PCs running Microsoft Windows 95. For two years, the Agriculture Department agency has been using Applixware from Applix Inc. of Westborough, Mass., on its Unix systems to handle word processing, edit pictures, create charts and design graphs for presentations.
NIST urges IT quality checks
The government's growing reliance on commercial software puts federal users at risk because of bugs in software that is rushed to market, a National Institute of Standards and Technology study has concluded. What government users need is a better way to measure the quality of the information technology tools they buy, said Mike Hogan, the NIST IT Lab's standards liaison and the study group's leader. The group concluded that NIST should rethink its role in
Interior Dept. upgrades its procurement system
American Management Systems Inc. of Fairfax, Va., won a five-year, $10 million contract to build the system for Interior. AMS' Procurement Desktop application will run under Microsoft Windows 3.1, Windows 95 and Windows NT. Zipora Brown, vice president of AMS financial management and administration, said the app accepts word processing and spreadsheet data from other applications, too.
Agriculture will cut jobs to pay for IT upgrades
A memo that Secretary Dan Glickman sent to agency chiefs this month gives a general outline. Agriculture wants to eliminate more than 1,300 jobs over the next five years. Savings to USDA could be as high as $450 million, Glickman said. Some of the money Agriculture saves will be applied to computer upgrades and modernization efforts. Chief information officer Anne Thomson Reed is one of two people selected to head the streamlining effort.
Scientist links PCs to run at 'super' speed
Roldan Pozo was tired of waiting for supercomputer time at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. So with $30,000, the NIST research scientist strung together three PCs and built his own supercomputer to run complex math calculations. "Most projects like this one start out with some people wanting to build a fast computer," said Pozo, a scientist in NIST's Mathematical and Computational Sciences Division. "But we had real work to get done."
Mirror sites let NASA keep Mars in view on Web
NASA officials said they were prepared for the popularity of the Mars Pathfinder's World Wide Web pages and have set up mirror sites to handle the deluge of visitors from around the world. Between July 4, when Pathfinder landed and began snapping pictures, and July 9, the Pathfinder Web pages logged 265 million hits.
Speedier computing was their passion
PTO created its hall of fame in 1973 to acknowledge the creative spirit of America's top inventors. The Washington induction ceremony focused on the man who invented RAM and two inventors who made possible the early PC/AT computers and 286 processors. Robert Dennard was working for IBM Corp. when he invented the first one-transistor dynamic memory cell. Today, dynamic RAM is found in nearly every computer.
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.
Commerce's Daley OKs AWIPS deployment
Twenty-one National Weather Service sites this year will begin using an operational version of the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System now that Commerce Secretary William Daley has approved AWIPS deployment. The weather service has been running a prototype version at 12 test locations to evaluate system performance. AWIPS contractor PRC Inc. developed the forecasting application software that runs on Hewlett-Packard Co.'s 750 and 755 series workstations. Daley's approval of the deployment
Through $1.5 billion PCHS, VA will forge global network
VA awarded its Procurement of Computer Hardware and Software this month to Digital Equipment Corp. of Maynard, Mass., and Sysorex Information Systems Inc. of Fairfax, Va. VA officials touted PCHS, pronounced ''peaches,''as the largest civilian agency hardware and software buy. Under the five-year contract, which has one base year and four option years, the two companies will continue the networking work VA began under the $298 million Nationwide Office Automation for the VA contract held
Stat-USA plans all-PC network
To drive down the cost of providing statistical economic data to businesses worldwide, a small Commerce Department program plans to move its work exclusively to a PC network. For now, the Stat-USA program hosts its World Wide Web pages from two Sun Microsystems Inc. Sparcserver 10 workstations. But the goal is to shift to a PC-only network running Windows NT.
McShan leaves government after 30 years
When Clyde McShan II began government work in 1965 as an auditor in the Agriculture Department, he had no idea his career would lead him down a path of systems integration and cutting edge technology. But it did. In his three decades of government service, McShan rose to the rank of deputy chief financial officer at the Commerce Department before retiring and taking a job in the private sector last month. He said that his
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."
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