Digital Government
GSA awards 3 recovery-services pacts
The General Services Administration late last week awarded contracts to Comdisco Continuity Services, SunGuard Recovery Services Inc. and IBM Business Recovery Services for governmentwide disasterrecovery services to support mainframe, midrange and desktop systems. The three vendors will provide '
Digital Government
Brio gets rich return in fed market
Just one year after Brio Technology began targeting the federal government market with its data warehousing tools, the vendor has garnered about 50,000 federal users covering more than 100 sites. Among the Palo Alto, Calif.based company's customers are the departments of Agriculture and the Interi
Digital Government
PC vendors jump on new Intel technology
The debut of Intel Corp.'s Celeron and two new Pentium II processors has spawned another round of product announcements by major PC vendors, with new desktop PCs, workstations and servers slated to begin shipping to federal customers by the end of the month. Intel's strategy with the much anticipat
Digital Government
Federal Bytes
Botched mission It seems some folks in Hollywood have an odd idea of what public/private partnership might be like in the next century. Astute moviegoers will notice that in the scifi remake 'Lost in Space,' the Robinson family's mission to another planet is sponsored by the Army and Silicon Grap
Digital Government
DOD runs largest-ever battlefield simulation
Defense and National Science Foundationfunded computer scientists recently completed the largestever battlefield simulation, in which more than 100,000 tanks, helicopters, missiles and other vehicles engaged in a computergenerated battle set in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq. Researchers said th
Digital Government
Boole offers MQSeries management
Systems management specialist Boole & Babbage Inc. has developed a tool for managing IBM Corp.'s popular MQSeries messaging middleware, and the company plans to offer customers a 90day free trial of the tool beginning in June. Boole & Babbage, the maker of Command Post management software, designe
Digital Government
Feds won't pay as AT&T probes outage
Federal agencies that lost frame relay service during AT&T's network outage last week will not pay for the service until the company isolates the problem and ensures it will not recur, a spokeswoman from AT&T Government Markets said. The spokeswoman confirmed that all the agencies that use AT&T's f
Digital Government
Education's Web site sets teachers FREE
Searching for information on the World Wide Web is similar to visiting a flea market: It is mildly interesting at first, but then it becomes frustrating as piles of useless junk overwhelm any desire to continue searching for anything of real value.
Digital Government
Praise politics unlikely to please federal workers
Proponents of a larger pay raise next year for federal workers are concerned (and they should be) that although they are aiming high, they may they be shooting at some of their own. Their dilemma is that Congress may vote for an increase in federal employee pay and then finance that effort by direc
Digital Government
Air Force calls for Unix-to-NT port
In yet another sign of the growing predominance of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows NT, the Air Force last week tapped a fourvendor team to pilot an initiative to move command and control applications from Unix to Windows NT. Under the cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) signed last we
Digital Government
Fedwire
White House Y2K council meets The President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion, meeting for the first time last week, formed groups to encourage agencies to work with companies that do business with the federal government and to address personnel issues that affect Year 2000 fixes. The council form
Digital Government
Set-Asides
IRS open to cyberattacks The General Accounting Office last week released a report that urges the Internal Revenue Service to 'assure [that] its computer systems are properly designed and protected.' In a fiscal 1997 audit of the IRS, GAO found that controls of the agency's automated systems have '
Digital Government
Shortchanging security is risky
When the President's Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection first met in late 1996 to figure out how to protect from terrorists the computers that operate the nation's electrical, transportation, financial and telecommunications systems, the idea of such a cyberattack seemed remote. No lo
Digital Government
DOD Software Technology Conference kicks off with network-centric program
The tenth annual Defense Department Software Technology Conference (STC) opens here today for a fourday run at the Salt Palace Convention Center, with 3,300 attendees already preregistered and roughly 240 information technology vendors scheduled to exhibit.
Digital Government
NIMA requests detailed satellite map imagery
The National Imagery and Mapping Agency last month issued a call to industry for proposals on how to integrate commercial systems for processing highresolution imagery with the agency's existing systems. NIMA's request comes amid a changing mission focus for the Defense Department, which is respon
Digital Government
Bad software represents "self-inflicted information warfare"
The Defense Department needs to bring new order and discipline to software acquisition, development and maintenance or face serious consequences in future wars, according to D. Patricia Sanders, DOD's director of test, systems engineering and evaluation.
Digital Government
DOE tests tool to speed priority Internet traffic
After more than a decade of research, the Energy Department this month successfully tested a technology that could allow Internet users especially federal researchers to speed delivery of highpriority traffic by bypassing the massive congestion endemic to the public network. During the test, r
Digital Government
SGI unveils Intel-centric technology road map
Silicon Graphics Inc., best known for its highend and highcost Unix servers and workstations, will revamp its product line to develop more affordable systems based on the Microsoft Corp. Windows NT operating system and Intel Corp. processors, the company announced last week. SGI will port its Uni
Digital Government
Agencies expand use of groupware
Although groupware technology has been around for several years, federal agencies have dramatically expanded their deployment of sophisticated groupware applications, with a growing emphasis on using the World Wide Web. Groupware is collaborative computing that encompasses everything from calendari
Digital Government