Digital Government
GAO to offer dispute resolution for protests
HERSHEY Pa. The General Accounting Office plans to tell agencies this month that it will allow them to request alternative dispute resolution services to avoid involvement in lengthy protest procedures. Ronald Berger associate general counsel for procurement law at GAO said at the Information Res
Digital Government
GSA revises its strategy for Post-FTS 2000
Responding to concerns from Congress and industry the General Services Administration has once again revised its PostFTS 2000 strategy decreasing the length of the contracts and allowing for a second competition in the third or fourth year of the program. A memo circulated to members of the Intera
Digital Government
Five-pact IT deal on the horizon
The Environmental Protection Agency plans to award five information technology services contracts over the next three years to provide computer systems development maintenance planning and telecommunications support. The EPA plans to use the contracts to buy the same types of services it is purchas
Digital Government
Intercepts
FIRST INITIAL * Sayonara WWMCCS. Look for DISA to finally turn off the World Wide Military Command and Control System within the next week with the Global Command and Control System taking over from the aging mainframebased command and control system said DISA director Lt. Gen. Al Edmonds speaking
Digital Government
Vendor feedback sought for model draft guidelines
The Office of Federal Procurement Policy is developing examples of provisions that agencies might include in statements of work for new performancebased service contracts and is seeking comments from vendors on two draft proposals concerning software development and information systems maintenance
Digital Government
Robbins-Gioia protests GCSS-AF award to Lockheed Martin
RobbinsGioia Inc. last week filed a protest with the General Accounting Office arguing that the Air Force used a flawed evaluation process when it awarded a $900 million modernization contract to Lockheed Martin Federal Systems in the middle of August. In its protest the Alexandria Va. company ass
Digital Government
CIO review foreshadows widespread fed evaluations
In what could be a yardstick for the evaluation of new federal chief information officers the General Accounting Office has looked at the CIO experience within NASA and found it wanting. The authority bestowed on the space agency's CIO is not enough to bring about the level of improvements envision
Digital Government
Web conference site facilitates info exchange
The General Services Administration's emerging Information Technology Applications Division has established a new electronic Web conference site to allow users to exchange information on smart card technology. The new site is the latest of about a dozen Web conference sites set up by GSA in recent
Digital Government
Beware the pitfalls of e-mail
Ah the wonders of electronic mail. We have all quickly grown so accustomed to using email in our daytoday business affairs that we wonder what we ever did before it came along. No longer must we play telephone tag to get an important message in front of another busy person. We can simply dash of
Digital Government
MCI wins DISN bandwidth manager
After years of fighting for a place in the federal telecommunications market MCI last week won the Defense Department's continental United States switch and network management contract ending AT&T's decadesold hegemony over military longhaul services. One industry analyst called the MCI win "an
Digital Government
20 teams tapped for services buy
The National Institutes of Health awarded fiveyear contracts to 20 teams of vendors last week in its experimental Chief Information Officer Solutions and Partners (CIOSP) program giving some 250 companies a shot at task orders that together are worth an estimated $100 million or more. The closely
Digital Government
Federal Bytes
FIRST INITIAL A CDROM by any other name The demise of the Federal Information Resources Management Regulation (FIRMR) presents a question that we know has been eating at the entire federal IT community: What will GSA now call its FIRMR/Federal Acquisition Regulation CDROM? Wonder no longer. The F
Digital Government
Treasury e-mail pilot to take on DMS, GSA
The Treasury Department angling for a central role in the federal electronic messaging hierarchy is looking to establish a $1 million multipleagency pilot to offer messaging services governmentwide through its Treasury Communications System (TCS). With its proposal Treasury is challenging the Gene
Digital Government
Ordering the DOD Acquisition Deskbook
You provided a valuable service in the Aug. 12 issue of Federal Computer Week by mentioning the availability of the Defense Department's new Defense Acquisition Deskbook on CDROM
Digital Government
For Perry, IT is a day at the beach
Some folks like to bring a stack of pageturning books to the beach to escape the office grind. Not Frank Perry the Defense Information Systems Agency's point man for integration engineering and interoperability he packs a pile of technical tomes. Perry DISA's technical director for engineering and
Digital Government
ROSTER
Two General Services Administration information technology veterans are expanding their influence in the international arena. G. Martin Wagner associate administrator at GSA's Office of Governmentwide Policy and Frank McDonough deputy associate administrator for intergovernmental solutions have bee
Digital Government
DARPA prototypes take new approach to design
While software developers slave away to develop innovative applications that will run efficiently on operating systems (OSes) designed in a different computing age nextgeneration OSes are beginning to take shape. Sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) these efforts are
Digital Government
Hughes wins $171M patent office contract
The Patent and Trademark Office awarded Hughes Data Systems a contract for desktop computers late last month that could be worth as much as $171 million. Under the contract Hughes will provide 120 MHz and 133 MHz Pentiumbased PCs manufactured by Micron Electronics Inc. The company also will supply
Digital Government
Lotus is first vendor to complete initial DMS testing
Product testing for the Defense Message System is making headway with Lotus Development Corp. emerging as the first DMS useragent vendor to complete the initial four test regimens. Lotus completed Government Open Systems Interconnection Profile (GOSIP) conformance testing which includes formal X.4
Digital Government