Digital Government
FEC site emphasizes information, not presentation
Campaign fundraising has kicked into full gear with the passing of Labor Day, and the Federal Election Commission is doing its best to get information on election spending out on its World Wide Web site. The FEC site, www.fec.gov, provides all campaign reports on political action committee (PAC) c
Digital Government
CBD Watch
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Agile information control environment. Sol. BAA 9826. (CBD, Sept. 8). The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Information Systems Office is seeking research proposals for developing technologies that enable agile information control across military
Digital Government
Feds must secure e-mail gateways
A number of the federal government's mail gateways are not secure, according to a CIO Council review of the top 100 federal gateways. The survey, conducted by a workgroup on email issues from the interoperability committee of the CIO Council, identified vulnerabilities such as areas in mail progra
Digital Government
Ready for battle
Bill Curtis, the Defense Department's point man for fixing the Year 2000 millennium bug, sees a certain cosmic balance in his assignment.
Digital Government
FBI pushes national intranet
The FBI is trying to increase awareness of a system to aid law enforcement officials nationwide, but technology problems at some small police departments could stymie access to the system. The Law Enforcement Online (LEO) system is an intranet that the FBI has been building since 1995 with the help
Digital Government
BMC offers flexible plan for licensing agreements
Application management vendor BMC Software Inc. has introduced a price structure that simplifies the buying process for customers who manage distributed systems and have to plan their expenditures over the long term, company officials said. BMC still allows customers to pay for products based on pr
Digital Government
GITS Board seeks funds for second encryption tests
The Government Information Technology Services (GITS) Board is working to secure $11 million to fund a second round of tests of a controversial encryption technology that has a builtin mechanism to allow data to be unscrambled. The board is seeking the funding to support 15 projects in 12 agencies
Digital Government
New PCs meld power and price (Part 2)
During the fiscal 1998 buying season, many federal PC buyers have emerged as part of the new class of power PC users who look to take advantage of the surge in the performance and capacity of desktop computers, according to industry and government sources. Over the past year, Intel Corp. has introd
Digital Government
Agenda
SEPTEMBER 8 Meeting of the Society for Software Quality Inc.'s Washington, D.C., Area Chapter. Greenbelt Public Library. Greenbelt, Md. Vic Basili, professor of computer science at the University of Maryland, College Park, and the executive director of the Fraunhofer CenterMaryland, will speak on
Digital Government
Navy to award IT-21 contract for ship LANs
The Information Technology for the 21st Century (IT21) project, which will enable the Navy to harness the power of commercial networks and computers aboard ships and ashore, will move closer to reality next week with the award of a key contract for shipboard localarea networks. Capt. Tim Traverso
Digital Government
GAO concludes State's Y2K fix moving too slowly
The General Accounting Office last month warned the State Department that it is moving too slowly to fix computers for the Year 2000 bug and needs to improve its management to meet the deadline. In a report released last month, GAO encouraged State to reassess all its systems, ensure that missionc
Digital Government
Spirit of GILS drives DOT search engine
When a government watchdog group singled out the Transportation Department last month for failing to make its information easily available to the public, Crystal Bush, an information technology program analyst, thought her department's efforts were worth a second look. The report by OMB Watch said
Digital Government
DNA decoding draws competition
The federal government's Human Genome Project (HGP), a 15year, $3 billion venture launched in 1990 to map out and catalog human DNA, has proceeded exceedingly well. And while the project which uses computers to identify DNA fragments has reached its halfway point ahead of schedule, it has met
Digital Government
AF plans rapid ramp-up of DMS client deployment
MONTGOMERY, Ala. The Air Force has completed the installation of more than half of its Defense Message System's unclassified infrastructure and expects a quick ramp up in the number of desktops equipped with client software based on Microsoft Corp.'s Exchange. Speaking last week at the Air Force
Digital Government
Lotus' new SmartSuite
Rival software vendors Lotus Development Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Corel Corp. have heaped more features on their office suites in attempts to top one another. While some of the extras provide improvements, others can impede the performance of the applications that government users depend on to do
Digital Government
USPS names chief tech officer to build 'info platform'
William Henderson, postmaster general at the U.S. Postal Service, announced last week the appointment of Norm Lorentz as the agency's first chief technology officer, who is tasked with carrying out the agency's new vision of an integrated 'information platform.' Lorentz, who has been with USPS sinc
Digital Government
Bay unveils wireless products
Following its recent acquisition of NetWave Technologies Inc., Bay Networks Inc. late last month introduced a line of wireless data products that gives the company an entree to new federal customers. The new Bay products are sophisticated radio transmitters called access points and cards that pl
Digital Government
Interagency panel reviews recordkeeping policy
An interagency committee working on a new policy for preserving federal electronic records plans to suggest ways that agencies can set priorities for cataloging their digital files. The decision, reached at a meeting of the Electronic Records Work Group last month, is in response to comments from g
Digital Government
SBA program to funnel contracts to smallest businesses
The Small Business Administration announced last week a new pilot program that will make it easier for businesses that have 15 or fewer employees to win federal contracts by giving the businesses the first chance to bid on some procurements. SBA designed its Very Small Business SetAside Pilot Prog
Digital Government