Digital Government

Hewlett-Packard brings thin client to feds

HewlettPackard Co. last month jumped into the thinclient market with the release of its first Microsoft Corp.'s Windowsbased terminal, now available on the General Services Administration schedule. Windowsbased terminals are lowend desktop computers designed to access applications that run on

Digital Government

SRA nabs $42M Fedsim task order for IT at GAO

SRA International Inc. this month was awarded a $42 million task order through the General Services Administration's Federal Systems Integration and Management Center (Fedsim) program to provide information technology services at the General Accounting Office. The task order was competed among cont

Digital Government

Council calls for $1B for IT research

Too much of the information technology research sponsored by federal agencies serves shortterm, missionspecific goals, and the government should spend more money studying fundamental IT problems, according to an interim report by the President's Information Technology Advisory Council. To maintai

Digital Government

Federal Bytes

MIDNIGHT MADNESS. The General Services Administration promised it would release the solicitation for the Washington Interagency Telecommunications System 2001 on Aug. 7, and it kept its promise. Just barely. Repeated checks of the WITS2001 World Wide Web site that day turned up no request for propo

Digital Government

Letter to the Editor

A chance at history For at least the past halfdozen years, Alan Proctor has both stimulated and exasperated his friends and colleagues in the federal information technology community. While Alan's direct style is offputting to some, his OpEd piece in FCW's Aug. 10 issue, 'WITS2001: Innovation or

Digital Government

CBD Watch

Federal Election Commission. Assistance and training for federal political committees regarding the electronic filing of campaign finance reports. Sol. RFP983. (CBD, Aug. 10) The FEC is soliciting proposals from organizations for assistance to and training of federal political committees regarding

Digital Government

Intercepts

Y2K SHUFFLE: Deputy CIO Marv Langston has assumed overall managment of Y2K within the Pentagon. This indicates the increased seriousness with which top DOD leaders, including SecDef William Cohen, view the problem. Where does that leave the Pentagon's ''Y2K czar'' Bill Curtis, who reportedly found

Digital Government

Agenda

17 Records Management for Managers. National Archives and Records Administration. Archives I Building. Washington, D.C. For more information, call George Chalou, (301) 7137100, Ext. 259; email, george.chalou@arch2.nara.gov; Web, www.nara.gov/nara/rm/tb98.html. 1719 NCMA Seminar on Source Select

Digital Government

CIOs address brain drain

Members of the Education and Training Committee of the CIO Council have begun work on recommendations to address the information technology 'brain drain' facing the federal government in the coming years. Committee member Emory Miller, director of professional development at the General Services Ad

Digital Government

Cylink builds PKI for USPS secure postage

Cylink Corp. announced last week that it has developed a publickey infrastructure (PKI) for the U.S. Postal Service's program that secures communications for users downloading and printing postage from their PCs. Under USPS' Information Based Indicia Program (IBIP), which is in pilot testing now,

Digital Government

Microsoft makes electronic commerce push in fed market

Microsoft Corp.'s federal operations last week launched an Internet server product designed for online commerce and laid out the company's strategy for the technology. Site Server 3.0, Commerce Edition, brings together components customers need to set up and manage electronic commerce applications.

Digital Government

DOD research program seeks IT, doctrine link

Continuing an effort that began in 1995 to study the impact of information technology on military command and control, the Defense Department last month requested research proposals that can help DOD make better use of IT in the battlefield. The broad agency announcement (BAA) was issued by the Com

Digital Government

Fedwire

DISA taps IBM for software pact IBM Corp. won a $299.7 million, fiveyear contract for the consolidation of IBM proprietary software maintenance contracts at the Defense mainframe processing megacenters operated by the Defense Information Systems Agency, as well as the DISA Contingency Operations C

Digital Government

Cohen: Y2K takes priority

The Defense Department has warned the military services that it will impose a moratorium on all software system modifications in calendar 1999 if necessary to permit all its information technology resources to focus on fixing the Year 2000 millennium bug, according to a memo signed earlier this mon

Digital Government

ET, phone home.com

NASA's announcement last week that it would begin exploring the development of an interplanetary Internet gave new meaning to the tired phrase 'thinking out of the box.' In what could pass as a plot for an upcoming Steven Spielberg movie, NASA scientists last week detailed a plan to build an Intern

Digital Government

The Rage for Value

This month's issue of civic.com is full of stories that show how information technology is being put to work as a tool for delivering civic and community value. In one case, the value is directly financial, as in our story about how Massachusetts, in order to lower procurement costs, is piloting a

Digital Government

Roster Change

Arlene Millard was selected as deputy director of the Agriculture Department's National Information Technology Center. Millard recently served as chief of the Telecommunications Division for the Farm Service Agency's Kansas City Management Office. Anne Reed, chief information officer at the USDA, h

Digital Government

FACNET alternative adds Defense users

Ecweb.net, an Internetbased electronic commerce service, recently stepped up its presence in the federal market with the addition of two Defense Department customers. The World Wide Web site, www.ecweb.net, was created by EC Web Technologies Inc. and links government agencies and vendors by electr

Digital Government

NIH boosts the EC in ECS II

Ten months into one of the largest and most complex set of computer contracts ever awarded, the National Institutes of Health is reading promising vital signs for the electronic shopping and ordering services of its Electronic Computer Store II program. Last September NIH selected 45 prime contract

Digital Government

Retirement plan switch not an easy choice

When it comes to retirement plans, federal employees are faced with a critical decision: whether to switch to the newer Federal Employees Retirement System or stay with the triedandtrue Civil Service Retirement System. The decision is not easy. Following are points to get you thinking about the c