Digital Government

Pay raise not enough for feds

In a recent column, I reported that Rep. Steny Hoyer (DMd.) had successfully amended the 1999 Treasury, Postal Service Appropriations Bill with the text of his legislation, the Federal Employees Pay Fairness Act (H.R. 3251). The language would have would maintained the Clinton administration's ori

Digital Government

New 8(a) standards not a welcome change

Although women welcome the recent changes to the Small Business Administration 8(a) Business Development Program regulations, newly admitted 8(a) companies will find the market for federal information technology contracts eroding. In response to President Clinton's initiative to reform government c

Digital Government

OPM to expand definition of IT positions

The Office of Personnel Management plans to consolidate occupational titles and further define information technology positions. Marilyn Gowing, director of personnel resources and the development center at OPM, briefed the Chief Information Officers Council in July on an initiative to create unive

Digital Government

New PCs meld power and price (Part 1)

Intel Corp.'s release of the 450 MHz Pentium II processor has unleashed a torrent of new desktop PCs and workstations. And now Compaq Computer Corp. enters the fray with the Sept. 8 release of the EN6450X. Intel's 450 MHz Pentium II processor features 512K of onboard Level 2 (L2) cache, which run

Digital Government

Unisys delivers servers, storage to DISA centers

Unisys Corp. announced last week that its Federal Systems unit had won $165 million worth of contracts from the Defense Information Systems Agency to deliver mainframes and storage systems to the agency's consolidated megacenters. DISA placed the orders for 24 Unisys ClearPath enterprise servers an

Digital Government

NPR fashions info gateway

Within 30 days, the National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR) plans to launch a single massive gateway for the public to search all of the federal government's World Wide Web sites to pinpoint information on government resources and services.

Digital Government

Intercepts

MONTGOMERY, ALA. SILICON SOUTH? The Standard Systems Group, headquartered here, managed once again to turn this sleepy southern capital into a hightech Mecca during the annual Air Force Information Technology Conference, luring both Michael Dell of Dell Computer Corp. and Scott McNealy from Sun

Digital Government

Navy issues BPA for Microsoft enterprise pact

The Navy late last month awarded an estimated $166 million enterprise license contract for Microsoft Corp.'s standard desktop software.

Digital Government

Federal Bytes

AND NOW A WORD FROM THE IRS. The first signs of the kinder, gentler Internal Revenue Service are beginning to show. At the CIO Council's Interagency Resources Management Conference last week in Virginia Beach, Va., IRS officials were on the stump, showing off the new look. The IRS' EFile program h

Digital Government

IRS on the front lines

The Internal Revenue Service has been given its marching orders become more taxpayerfriendly or else and do so while treating all taxpayers fairly, zealously guarding taxpayers' privacy and, of course, collecting what is due the government. It is a pretty tall order, but the IRS, boosted by re

Digital Government

AF looks to IT to help field 'agile' forces

MONTGOMERY, Ala. Information technology will play a major role in a new Air Force initiative to improve the ability to respond to crises around the globe, according to Gen. George T. Babbit, commander of the Air Force Materiel Command, who kicked off the 12th Annual Air Force Information Technolo

Digital Government

Study shows power of industry/fed union

The Defense Systems Management College at Fort Belvoir, Va., recently published a case study called 'Implementing Acquisition Reform: A Case Study on Joint Direct Attack Munitions.' Joint direct attack munitions (JDAM) is a kit consisting of global positioning satellite equipment and computers, whi

Digital Government

Army major, FTC team win annual IRMCO awards

The General Services Administration and the Chief Information Officers Council last week presented the annual IRMCO award to an Army major responsible for developing a Defense Department network management system and to a team of developers who worked on a Federal Trade Commission system to help ba

Digital Government

Connecting the dots

The National Cancer Institute soon will launch a project that uses digital mapping technology available on the market today to develop applications with an unprecedented capability to help researchers find links between cancer and environmental and social factors. The pact, to be awarded as early a

Digital Government

Sun CEO McNealy takes the stage at Air Force show

Scott McNealy, chief executive officer of Sun Microsystems Inc., took the opportunity of making a keynote address at the Air Force Information Technology Conference to predict yet again the demise of the PC. Kicking off 'Industry Day' last week at the show in Montgomery, Ala., McNealy predicted tha

Digital Government

Roster Change

Skip Kemerer, previously NASA's Scientific and Engineering Workstation Procurement II chief and head of the Multiservices/ADP Procurement Branch at Goddard Space Flight Center, has accepted a job at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as a senior computer specialist. Patrick Logan, assistant director

Digital Government

CBD Watch

Air Force Research Laboratory. Powered lowcost autonomous attack system. Sol. MNK PRDA980004. (CBD, Sept. 2) The Air Force Research Laboratory, Munitions Directorate, Assessment and Demonstrations Division is interested in receiving proposals for the Powered LowCost Autonomous Attack System adv

Digital Government

CDSI continues post-merger metamorphosis

In a few weeks, Computer Data Systems Inc. will change its name to ACS Government Solutions Group, but the new moniker tells only part of the story of the developments of the past two years at the Rockville, Md.based federal systems integrator. The name change caps a merger announced last year whe

Digital Government

PC vendors wage price war

MONTGOMERY, Ala. With more than a bit of showbiz flair, PC vendors at the annual Air Force Information Technology Conference here kicked off the last, key month of the federal buying season with a price war. Compared with last year, when competition faded due to the disappearance of Zenith Data

Digital Government

Set-Asides

GSA releases procurement paper The General Services Administration's Office of Information Technology last week released a white paper outlining the advantages and disadvantages of IT acquisition vehicles. Procurement reform laws passed in the past few years created new options for IT acquisition.