Digital Government

Melissa takes down Marine Corps e-mail

The fastspreading email virus Melissa has forced the Marine Corps to shut down its basetobase email communications at least until tomorrow, a spokeswoman for the Marines confirmed today.

Digital Government

CIOs Map Out Priorities

Gathered here for the National Association of State Information Resource Executives midyear conference, state chief information officers yesterday registered their wish list of issues for an information technology platform being pulled together by the nation's governors

Digital Government

Melissa virus stows away aboard Navy ship

The wildly proliferating computer virus Melissa, which has infected email servers across government and the private sector, has made its way to email accounts on this command ship of the U.S. 7th Fleet, operating 20 miles of the coast of Guam in the western Pacific Ocean.

Digital Government

The TSP needs greater flexibility

Congress is said to be contemplating changes to the Thrift Savings Plan to make the program more flexible for federal workers and to open the program to military service members. The program can certainly use more flexibility. Currently, TSP enrollees who want to invest in the stock market can do s

Digital Government

DOD scales back GPS feature

Citing security reaspons, the U.S. Space Command this month stopped issuing important supplemental data on it

Digital Government

Sprint wins bulk of DOD low-speed network services

Sprint captured the largest initial order on a new $600 million, multiple vendor, 10year Defense Department contract to provide relatively lowspeed network services departmentwide across the United States. The Defense Information System Agency created the program to meet the needs of DOD organiza

Digital Government

HHS tackles recordkeeping with workflow

The Department of Health and Human Services is deploying a workflow system in Secretary Donna Shalala's office that will include electronic recordkeeping capabilities possibly the first such system to be installed in the top reaches of a federal agency. The installation is significant because it

Digital Government

Congress may put squeeze on FBI data sharing project

Tight budgets and fears of cost overruns may keep Congress from giving the FBI all the money it seeks for a project that would allow agents to share data on crimes under investigation more easily. Those familiar with the FBI's $430 million Information Sharing Initiative say Congress may decide to

Digital Government

IBM's new Xeon system proves speedy

Tested by Anna Bernat and Andreas Uiterwijk IBM Corp. recently released its latest Black Beauty: the IntelliStation Z Pro Workstation with Microsoft Corp.'s Windows NT 4.0. In our testing, the Z Pro was so fast that we initially thought it was a dualprocessor system. But with only one of Intel Cor

Digital Government

Set-Asides

IRS to relax tax rule The Internal Revenue Service may soon loosen a requirement that will result in fewer small businesses having to file taxes electronically. The IRS now requires small businesses that pay more than $50,000 in payroll taxes to use the Electronic Federal Tax Payment System (EFTPS)

Digital Government

Federal Bytes

THE BIGGER THE NERD. At a House hearing on Justice Department financial management this month, Rep. Steve Horn (RCalif.), chairman of the Government Management, Information and Technology Subcommittee, asked witnesses in a roundabout way how realistic their approach to computer security was. '

Digital Government

Letters to the Editor

On SDB preferences and fed employee suggestions Many in the smallbusiness community will rightly applaud your sensibility about the Defense Department eliminating the preference for small and disadvantagedbusiness procurements ['Preference cutoff handcuffs DOD,' FCW, March 3]. Other than creatin

Digital Government

IBM unveils tool for managing e-catalogs

IBM Corp. last week released a new client tool to work with its electronic commerce server software. The tool will help agencies build and manage electronic catalogs. Called Catalog Architect, the tool makes it easier for agencies to manage and update product information stored in online catalogs,

Digital Government

On the road to ERP

The old maxim 'no pain, no gain' sums up the process of setting up enterprise resource planning systems. The benefits of ERP which integrates software modules covering the gamut of business management functions, including planning, manufacturing, sales and marketing systems have been well docum

Digital Government

HUD fights GAO's 'high-risk' label

The Department of Housing and Urban Development and several members of Congress are questioning the General Accounting Office's reasons for keeping HUD on the GAO's list of 'highrisk' agencies, specifically, and what criteria in general makes any agency highrisk. HUD has a history of organization

Digital Government

Fingerprint ID systems point to increased security

No longer the exclusive domain of science fiction, biometrics the use of physical traits or characteristics to identify a human being has entered the real world as a viable security option. Some of the most popular biometric systems today include fingerprint recognition, iris scanning, retina s

Digital Government

Report: Allow cyberwar response

The Pentagon's policy of prohibiting the Defense Department from mounting a counter cyberattack if its computers are attacked puts the military at risk, according to a report released last week. DOD's 'purely passive' approach to protecting its information systems from cyberattacks could result in

Digital Government

Feds investigate Melissa virus

Federal officials said today said they are looking for the source of a computer virus that affected both government and privatesector systems on Friday.

Digital Government

Census readies offices for 2000

The Census Bureau recently finished automating and began staffing 130 out of 520 temporary census field offices that will support data collection activities during the next national head count. Under the Automation Infrastructure Local Census Office program, Census will lease, set up and automate 5

Digital Government

Best value is key to securing federal IT

President Clinton astounded the information technology community last month when he proposed in his fiscal 2000 budget more than $1.4 billion for critical infrastructure protection. This is the first concerted federal effort to protect the vulnerable U.S. infrastructure including components such