Digital Government

Letters to the Editor

Industry needs to stop whining over ICEMAN I have been following the issues associated with the award of the ICEMAN contract to the USDA and I have never heard such whining before. It certainly seems unseemly coming as it does from the captains of industry. What is this unfair competition nonsense

Digital Government

AMS wins contract to track federal employees' nest eggs

American Management Systems Inc. last week announced an estimated $30 million contract to develop and install a recordkeeping system that will track the more than $47 billion that federal employees have invested in the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP). The system will help manage TSP a retirement savings

Digital Government

Round Two

WORLD WIDE TECHNOLOGY INC. SHOULD HAVE BEEN INCLUDED IN THE LIST OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY 8(A) COMPANIES LISTED IN THE JUNE 9 FEDERAL INTEGRATOR SUPPLEMENT. THE COMPANY SHOULD HAVE APPEARED AS THE FIFTHRANKED COMPANY WITH FEDERAL IT REVENUE OF $72.5 MILLION. AN UPDATED RANKING IS AVAILABLE AT WWW

Digital Government

Intergraph unveils reduced-cost, four-way enterprise server

Intergraph Computer Systems today announced two Microsoft Corp. Windows NT servers targeting enterprise and departmental computing that offer a price point up to $6 000 lower than previous models. Intergraph's InterServe 650tx and 660tx servers run up to four 200 MHz Pentium Pro processors. The pro

Digital Government

Bell Atlantic offers disaster recovery

Bell Atlantic Federal Systems last week launched a service to help agencies with disaster recovery planning for their data and communications networks. Bell Atlantic's CommGuard will cover a range of disaster recovery offerings from risk assessment to integrated disaster recovery solutions. The com

Digital Government

Vendors: No high-end IT on GSA Advantage

Information technology vendors have been meeting since April with officials from the General Services Administration's Federal Supply Service trying to convince them not to include highend computer equipment on their GSA Advantage electronic commerce system. But for now GSA officials plan to put t

Digital Government

NARA kicks off 20-month projectto digitize vast historical holdings

The National Archives and Records Administration last week began a 20month effort to digitize thousands of the nation's most significant historical documents and make them available on the World Wide Web. The project which will create electronic versions of papers photographs recordings maps and o

Digital Government

Canadian chip to stalk killer germs

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency last month awarded $2 million to a Canadian consortium in an ongoing effort to develop a microchipbased device that would offer soldiers and medical technicians a simpler quicker and more portable way to test if they are being attacked by killer germs

Digital Government

Fedwire

Army releases $469M Stamis RFP The Army last week put out a solicitation for the $469 million followon procurement to its Program Executive Office Standard Army Management Information Systems (PEO Stamis) contract. The Stamis Computer Contract II will provide commercial PC notebooks desktops and s

Digital Government

New applications, technology expand world of virtual reality

Virtual reality once the domain of science fiction books and Hollywood blockbusters is becoming a more viable and increasingly affordable solution for many federal users. The books and movies in fact have created remarkably high expectations for virtual reality. People outside the industry expect V

Digital Government

Vendors to cash in on GSA deal

An upcoming solicitation for the procurement of future government credit cards could provide vendors of smart card technology with their biggest market opportunity to date. In a draft request for proposals issued late last month the General Services Administration's Federal Supply Service said that

Digital Government

GSA awards small firms FAST $3.6B

The General Services Administration's National Capital Region has selected 40 small and disadvantaged vendors to receive contracts totaling as much as $3.6 billion for information technology integration services and products.[ ]The awards worth up to $90 million apiece and some of which are still a

Digital Government

Hill probes Mac-PC controversy

The Johnson Space Center's controversial policy to standardize all the center's workstations on a single PC platform has now drawn fire from Congress which is concerned that NASA may have violated fairandopencompetition rules. Last week a group of House members was garnering support for a letter

Digital Government

CBO pitches voucher plan for FEHBP to Congress

Although the details of the budget agreement still need to be ironed out it appears that federal employees will be specifically identified as casualties in the war against the budget deficit. And why not? They don't have much clout come election time. Congress has not yet identified the specific sa

Digital Government

Panel plans to beef up Computer Security Act

Calling the lack of computer security in the federal government 'a national crisis ' Rep. Constance Morella (RMd.) announced last week that the House Science Committee plans to introduce a bill this month to strengthen the 10yearold Computer Security Act. Designed to establish minimum security s

Digital Government

Federal Bytes

No fun allowed Who says working for the federal government cannot be fun? Apparently many government workers have been having a ball playing computer games at work. According to a recent issue of CIO magazine users of government computers logged more than 5 000 hours during a recent threemonth per

Digital Government

Roster

Ira Hobbs has been named deputy chief information officer at the Agriculture Department under Anne Reed the department's CIO. A permanent replacement has not yet been named for Hobbs who was director of operations at the USDA. Col. Marcia Tamblyn commander of the Defense Information Technology Cont

Digital Government

Four-star Adm. Clemins starts C2 revolution with IT-21

PEARL HARBOR Hawaii Not many fourstar admirals bother to burrow down into the technical underpinnings of their command and control (C2) systems. Adm. Archie Clemins commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet (CINCPACFLT) headquartered here has not only mastered arcane technical jargon but he h

Digital Government

NIST initiative will shine spotlight on Elliptic Curve

A recent initiative at the National Institute of Standards and Technology to broaden the government's Digital Signature Standard (DSS) has increased the visibility of a littleknown encryption technology: Elliptic Curve. NIST last month said it plans to develop a proposed revision to DSS that would

Digital Government

FAA weighs leasing option for computer equipment

Looking for more flexibility in how it procures computer equipment the Federal Aviation Administration is considering leasing computer equipment including its desktops and servers instead of buying what it needs outright. The FAA is looking at the benefits of leasing on a broad scale with interGMT