Digital Government

Pennsylvania will conduct an online auction for electricity services in the commonwealth

Pennsylvania on Tuesday will conduct an online auction for electricity services in the commonwealth, the eighth such auction performed there since March.

Digital Government

HCFA to launch Y2K awareness week

The Health Care Financing Administration, the federal agency that manages Medicare, announced last week that it has designated Nov. 1520 as National Medicare Year 2000 Testing Week, enabling health care providers to evaluate their billing systems in an endtoend test with Medicare systems. Althou

Digital Government

Virginia transfers IT contracts

Gov. Jim Gilmore this week announced the transfer of statewide information technology contracts from the Office of the Secretary of Administration to the Office of the Secretary of Technology (SoTech).

Digital Government

Exabyte to unveil big-time tape drive

Exabyte Corp. this week will unveil a larger and faster tape drive designed for organizations that want to archive and back up large amounts of data very quickly. The Mammoth2 (M2) tape drive will be the biggest and fastest tape drive available in its class when it is launched this week, said Gr

Digital Government

Tech expands beyond CIO

The recent explosive growth of the Internet and electronic commerce has changed the way states do business, and now plenty of people besides the chief information officer are interested in technology, according to the head of the National Electronic Commerce Coordinating Council.

Digital Government

Center gives global view of Y2K problems

With fewer than 50 days until the Year 2000, the federal government is approaching its final test on procedures for tracking and analyzing all the information on potential national and international problems that may occur because of bad date code.

Digital Government

Navy seeks to bypass mandated network

The Navy is building a case for setting up its own network to help support its multibilliondollar agencywide intranet rather than relying wholly on the Defense Department's mandated network, a Navy official said last month. The Defense Information Systems Network (DISN), maintained by the Defense

Digital Government

States put Y2K freeze on computer buys

Some states have put moratoriums on computer purchases and upgrades until the Year 2000 datechange scare is well behind them.

Digital Government

Navy adds to IT-21 offerings

The Navy this month awarded a blanket purchase agreement that adds several IBM Corp. products to a list of choices available to its Atlantic Fleet as part of a program to connect its ships and bases with commercial desktop systems. The Navy's Fleet Industrial Supply Center in Philadelphia awarded t

Digital Government

How to make 'service to the citizen' meaningful

Some federal government agencies are giving new meaning to the term 'service to the citizen.' Agencies are adopting a commercial practice known as customer relationship management. The basic tenet of CRM is total organization or agency customer centricity. I am pleased that the leadership within g

Digital Government

What are the policies of affirmative action?

A company representative asked the following question: Our company started out very small, but we have been growing. The company may have to comply with certain affirmative action requirements as we get larger. What are these requirements? To whom do they apply? All but the smallest government cont

Digital Government

Staying connected

Harold Gracey, acting chief information officer at the Department of Veterans Affairs, never served in the military unless you count his sixyear stint as a policeman in the National Guard. He was never wounded in combat or stormed an enemy encampment, but he understands what dedication to a miss

Digital Government

Fedwire Briefs

Computer morphing a war crime Falsely communicating misinformation using altered images or documents, a strategy that the Defense Department has considered, would be a war crime, according to a DOD study released last week. The use of information operations tactics, such as deception and perceptio

Digital Government

Remembering just how bad the bad old days were

On a recent flight, however, my interest was piqued when I glimpsed the celluloid pocket notepad holder of the woman sitting next to me.

Digital Government

VPNs could help astronauts send data

NASA astronauts working on a space shuttle or international space station eventually could use Internetbased systems to transfer data to controllers and researchers on Earth through a secure link. Earlier this month, engineers from NASA's Space Communications Office and Veridian Trident Data Syste

Digital Government

LANDesk gives users a grip on desktops, servers

Intel Corp.'s LANDesk Management Suite 6.3 actually is more of a desktop management tool than a local or widearea network manager. It offers some of the functionality of a complete enterprise management suite, but it lacks the network monitoring functionality of network management tools such as H

Digital Government

SEC seeks securities fraud Internet sniffer

The Securities and Exchange Commission plans to develop a network application to scour public areas of the Internet to search for messages, unusual traffic patterns and other clues that may lead to the arrest of criminals engaged in online securities fraud. The SEC this month announced it would sol

Digital Government

DOD, GSA buy into universal smart card

A new mandate that requires the use of a common smart card throughout the Defense Department and an upcoming estimated $1 billion governmentwide solicitation for smart card products and services have set the stage for the federal government to become the largest consumer of smart cards in the world

Digital Government

Pentagon hit by 'World Wide Wait'

The Defense Department's exploding use of the Internet has put such a squeeze on network bandwidth that it threatens new strategies to use information technology systems to manage the Pentagon's business and fight wars. Although the Defense Information Systems Agency has more than doubled capacity

Digital Government

Army battles irrelevancy

Atlantic City, N.J. Although the Army's latest plan to build lighter, leaner and more mobile forces relies heavily on information technology, the effort has nothing to do with breaking free of hulking tanks or creating a more lethal force out of an already lethal Army. What the strategy really i