Digital Government
Merisel creates fed division
In response to reseller demand, Merisel Inc. last week announced a new division targeting the federal market with a dedicated sales force, marketing programs and expanded product offerings. Based in El Segundo, Calif., Merisel is a distributor of more than 25,000 computer hardware and software prod
Digital Government
Dell adds leasing to GSA schedule
Looking to capitalize on the growing interest in leasing rather than buying PCs, Dell Computer Corp. last week announced a new leasing program on its General Services Administration schedule. Dell, which has been the topselling vendor on the GSA schedule in recent quarters, offers four options und
Digital Government
ITS: The New Road Rage
It's a phrase born in Hollywood, but one that accurately sums up the dilemma of state and urban transportation officials who are dealing with traffic and population patterns in the late 20th century: If you build it, they will come.
Digital Government
Sun Fed enters NT debate
When Scott McNealy, the president and chief executive officer of Sun Microsystems Inc., first coined the phrase 'The network is the computer' in 1987, only one application was available for Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system, and Microsoft had not reached the $400 million mark in total reve
Digital Government
DOD to use IT for nuke cleanup
Marking the final stage of a 10year, multimilliondollar environmental restoration project, the Defense Special Weapons Agency last month issued a request for proposals to develop cuttingedge information technologies to help clean up the remnants of a Cold Warera nuclear weapons disaster. The RF
Digital Government
System helps Treasury ease its HR paperwork
The Treasury Department, which spends 75 percent of its $12 billion budget on its 158,000 employees, is developing a computer system to reduce the paperwork burden that is associated with human resources tasks and to provide new personnel management tools. The system, to be based on software from P
Digital Government
Rep. Mica's proposal is not fed-friendly
Federal employees should take notice when the chairman of the House Government Reform and Oversight Subcommittee on Civil Service drafts legislation that is patently unfriendly to their interests. Rep. John Mica (RFla.) has included some troubling provisions in a draft version of civil service ref
Digital Government
Office Suite Success
The manufacturers of the three major suites of office applications have extended their ongoing battle to new fronts in their scramble to give users products that encompass Internet and voice applications. But federal users have been less concerned with these breakthroughs than simply adhering to ag
Digital Government
BOP taps two vendors for network buy
The Bureau of Prisons earlier this month awarded blanket purchase agreements to Vanstar Government Systems Inc. and Intellisys Technology Corp. for providing the bureau with all the hardware, software and services it needs to maintain its networks. Products and services supplied under BOPnet 2000 w
Digital Government
Bell Atlantic, GTE combo could aid feds
Although driven by a strategy focused on the commercial market, the proposed $52 billion merger of GTE Corp. with Bell Atlantic Corp. announced last week may bring the benefits of soupedup products and services to federal customers, telecommunications observers said. Under the terms of the agreeme
Digital Government
Panel to publish guide
The Information Technology Resources Board has developed another guide for government IT managers that shares 'lessons learned' gathered over the past several years of reviewing an array of federal IT programs. ITRB is an interagency group of federal IT officials tasked with assisting agencies in t
Digital Government
Contracting for better GPRA results
Several years ago, the Department of Veterans Affairs contracted for information technology to help the agency reduce the processing time for veterans' benefits claims. At the end of the day, the vendor got paid, but processing times were reduced only minimally. I relate this example neither to ins
Digital Government
Fedwire
Lee confirmed for OFPP post The Senate on July 30 approved Deidre A. Lee to be administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy. Lee has served as associate administrator for procurement at NASA since March 1993. Before that post, she served as NASA's deputy associate administrator for pro
Digital Government
FAA orders GPS risk assessment
With the future of one of its major modernization programs on the line, the Federal Aviation Administration and two aviation groups have hired Johns Hopkins University to test whether the satellitebased Global Positioning System can provide the only navigation service for airlines, freeing up the
Digital Government
Anti-piracy bill threatens security tests
A bill designed primarily to protect digital copyright laws contains a provision that could make illegal the network security testing often used by federal agencies to gauge how safe their networks are from hacker attacks or other unauthorized uses. The legislation, called the Digital Millennium Co
Digital Government
Intercepts
Dumping DISA? My sniffer satellite has picked up a number of signals that Lt. Gen. David Kelley and his crew on Courthouse Road face defections by unhappy customers on both the telecom and data processing sides of DISA's house. I have picked up mediumstrength signals that one of the uniformed serv
Digital Government
NASA PC cluster on IT crime trail
NASA has designed a lowcost, highperformance computing cluster of PCs to analyze evidence gathered from network intrusions and other computer crime investigations. The space agency's Computer Crimes Division (CCD) is using a Beowulfclass highperformance computing cluster to process evidence gat
Digital Government
Disclosure fears threaten to slow files' release
The Energy Department July 31 awarded DynMeridian Corp. a fiveyear contract potentially worth $6.8 million to build a stateoftheart computer system to speed declassification of some 280 million pages of Cold Warera documents. DOE needs the system to cope with the volume of historically importa
Digital Government