Digital Government

Lockheed tapped for simulation system

The Air Force last week awarded Lockheed Martin Corp. a sevenyear, $176 million contract to develop and install up to 18 pilot training systems, marking the initial fielding of the next generation of tactical simulation technology. The new system, called the Mission Training Center, not only will

Digital Government

NARA records draft plan on its way to OMB

The National Archives and Records Administration is floating a pareddown plan for how agencies should manage their information systems records. The draft plan, which is headed for Office of Management and Budget review, covers most documents that relate to agencies' internal information technology

Digital Government

AF to offer records tools governmentwide

The Air Force soon plans to add electronic records management (ERM) software from three vendors to a governmentwide software and services contract and is reviewing whether to choose one product for servicewide deployment. The addition to the Air Force's Integrated ComputerAided Software Engineeri

Digital Government

PC vendors benefit from AF strategy

In its fourth month of operation, the Air Force Standard Systems Group's latest acquisition strategy for buying standard computer products is beginning to pay off in the form of supplier and product flexibility and unprecedented customer response times, officials said. Gateway Inc., Micron Electron

Digital Government

DOD defends software deals

The Defense Department's strategy of negotiating hefty discounts for enterprisewide commercial software licenses has drawn fire from industry, which fears DOD may not be getting the best deals possible. DOD launched its Enterprise Software Initiative (ESI) last month when it awarded a $9.8 million

Digital Government

Feds ponder CKO role

While agencies begin to embrace the concept of knowledge management to improve federal employees' access to information, observers in and out of government disagree on the role of the chief knowledge officer, a position that has been created to lead the charge into this new territory. In the past m

Digital Government

Intercepts

QUICKLY ENABLED. The 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit managed to move its satellitebased Joint Task Force Enabler system, which provides NIPRNET, SIPRNET and Joint Worldwide Communications System access for deployed forces, into Kosovo from Macedonia almost as quickly as the grunts themselves. The 2

Digital Government

State upgrades personnel system

The State Department is rolling out a new application that will make it easier for the agency to store and retrieve personnel records and information by modernizing and integrating its aging personnel systems into one database. The Global Employment Management System (GEMS) provides realtime monit

Digital Government

OmniForm 4.0: Looking good but could be better

In the government's ongoing effort to reduce the amount of paperwork that its employees and the general public must complete, one of the most effective weapons in its arsenal may be Caere Corp.'s OmniForm 4.0 electronic forms tool. Built around the optical character recognition (OCR) engine found i

Digital Government

GTE sells 3 government units

General Dynamics Corp., a manufacturer of 'heavy iron' military platforms such as tanks, submarines and fighter aircraft, placed a $1 billion bet last week on the future of digitized warfare with the purchase of the majority of GTE Government Systems. General Dynamics, which manufactures M1 tanks f

Digital Government

NCR wins USPS pact

The U.S. Postal Service last week awarded a contract for the second stage of its effort to put pointofservice computer terminals in most post offices.

Digital Government

Web development software: Tools of the trade

It's a modernday equivalent of the chickenandegg riddle: Do most agencies have their own World Wide Web sites because tools have been developed to make it easy to design attractive Web sites? Or were the tools developed to serve the growing popularity of the Web? Whatever the answer may be, the

Digital Government

FCW wins online award

Federal Computer Week received a top national award last week for its online news coverage. The award was part of the 21st annual Publication Excellence Awards of the American Society of Business Press Editors. ASBPE gave its gold award to FCW, an International Data Group Corp. publication, for bes

Digital Government

Federal Bytes

LONG ARM OF THE (BROTHERIN) LAW. Fresh off his tour as California chief information officer, John Thomas Flynn, now a vice president for Litton/PRC Inc., regaled attendees at last week's Federation of Government Information Processing Councils' Management of Change Conference with a story about h

Digital Government

Ruling delivers job, not post office box

Recently, an administrative law judge had to decide whether a Postal Service employee who was on the verge of being fired should lose his right to rent a post office box. The case involved Michael Sands, a Rochester, N.Y., postal employee since 1985. Sands had rented a post office box at the Downto

Digital Government

Internet tax panel entangled in challenges

The panel Congress created to help solve the problem of whether and how to tax Internet commerce held its first meeting last week in Williamsburg, Va. Only the naive and the hopeless optimists among us really expect congressional commissions to accomplish anything. In the beginning of last week's m

Digital Government

Viador brings portal tech to fed market

Viador Inc., which designs and installs World Wide Webbased information portals for large organizations, is making a push into the federal market, receiving approval for a General Services Administration schedule contract and opening a Washington, D.C.area office. Viador specializes in structurin

Digital Government

Fedwire Briefs

NSA, NIST tools urged Federal security experts last week urged a House panel to include in a rewrite of the 12yearold Computer Security Act language that would require agencies to use security solutions provided by the National Security Agency and the National Institute of Standards and Technolog

Digital Government

Letters to the Editor

For the record Several recent FCW articles and the latest DOD Buyers' Guide have reported information on GTSI's Portable3 and PC3 contracts that is incorrect. Two articles ['Army Saves on Laptops,' FCW, May 31, and 'IDI gears up Portable3,' FCW, June 7] incorrectly stated that the Army was allo

Digital Government

Study: Exec pay hurts recruitment

A 'war for talent' being waged among private companies could increase the drain of the federal senior executive work force, and the government likely will fail to meet the challenge of recruiting and keeping highlevel workers, according to a study released last week. The study, conducted by the co