Digital Government
Find a balance between info access, security
Federal agency World Wide Web sites burst forth with new information and data sources so fast nowadays that no one can keep up with the flood. If you can't get the government information you seek via the Internet, you have your choice of getting it through print, faxondemand, CDROM, email or th
Digital Government
Army smart to push for contract results
The most important trend in contracting today is a growing recognition that the crucial benefit of procurement reform is giving the government more leeway to structure business arrangements with vendors in a way that increases the chances that contractors will deliver results to government customer
Digital Government
New regs mean continued downsizing
The Office of Management and Budget recently issued new contractingout regulations to facilitate federal agencies' compliance with the Federal Activities Inventory Reform (FAIR) Act of 1998 (see Federal Register, June 24, 1999; pages 33, 92733, 935). But the new regulations represent nothing more
Digital Government
SSA taps MCI WorldCom for telecom services
The Social Security Administration last week announced that it had selected MCI WorldCom to provide its voice, data, Internet and conferencing services through the General Services Administration's FTS 2001 network. MCI estimated the eightyear deal to be worth $250 million. SSA is the ninth major
Digital Government
Set-Asides
Appropriations bill amendment targets INS information sharing The Commerce, Justice, State appropriations bill passed by the Senate last month included a provision that would require the Immigration and Naturalization Service to do a better job of sharing information with other federal agencies. Un
Digital Government
Hill gets tough on DOD budget
In what has been described as a turning point in the Defense Department's longterm budget plans, the House of Representatives this month passed the fiscal 2000 Defense appropriations bill, while harshly criticizing DOD's methods of addressing critical shortfalls in modernization and of overseeing
Digital Government
FBI fingerprints go digital
The FBI last week began to operate a new system that thousands of law enforcement agents nationwide will use to run criminal background checks by using fingerprints. The new system, the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS), goes online after years of cost overruns. Project
Digital Government
Notebook class of '99 earns high honors
Testing by Pat McClung You couldn't ask for much more from the notebook computer industry. Since the FCW Test Center's annual notebook roundup last August, vendors have improved nearly every aspect of their systems, from processor speeds and hard drive capacity to system weight and battery life - a
Digital Government
Fedwire Briefs
HHS names deputy CIO Brian P. Burns, the director of telecommunications and operations at the Internal Revenue Service, has accepted a new job as deputy chief information officer at the Department of Health and Human Services. He will start Aug. 16. Spotila confirmed at OIRA John Spotila, formerly
Digital Government
Clinton forms security panel
President Clinton last month signed an executive order to create the National Infrastructure Assurance Council, the final organization to be established as part of an overall structure to protect the critical infrastructure of the United States against cyberterrorism and other attacks. The council
Digital Government
Brother takes color printing on the road
Now that notebook computers let you take computing power on the road, what about printing power? Brother Industries Ltd. has come up with a handy, easytouse solution in the form of the MP21C color inkjet mobile printer. This little device weighs a mere 2 pounds, 8 ounces and measures only 2 inc
Digital Government
Reserve IT corps a sensible idea
Since the American Revolution, the United States has relied heavily on its citizen soldiers to defend the country against all enemies, foreign and domestic. In fact, as seen during the recent war in Kosovo, the Defense Department would be hard pressed to carry out a major military operation without
Digital Government
National Weather Service wraps up modernization
The National Weather Service last week announced it has completed deployment of a new weather processing system, which brings to an end the agency's 10year, $4.5 billion modernization program to improve weather forecasting. The Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) integrates rada
Digital Government
Keeping the lines open
Bob Bubniak, associate deputy assistant secretary for telecommunications at the Department of Veterans Affairs, acquired a profound understanding of the importance of telecom early in his career. As a second lieutenant in the Army Signal Corps, Bubniak found himself deployed to Germany in 1961 ju
Digital Government
Roster Change
Col. Gregory Premo, deputy director of the Programs and Architecture Office in the Army's Office of the Director of Information Systems for Command, Control, Communications and Computers, last month was assigned to the position of deputy director of operations at the Defense Information Systems Age
Digital Government
DriveSavers turns data recovery into a science
Several months ago, Jeffrey Colvin, a senior physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, came into his office after a planned power outage at the agency to discover that somehow he had lost vital data on his computer. Colvin's hope to retrieve the information began to fizzle after he learn
Digital Government
Agency sees reward of management labor
Outsourcing management of the desktop computing environment is proving to have a direct impact on the way the agency uses information technology to support its work force, according to officials at one agency. The Department of Housing and Urban Development's Office of the Inspector General last mo
Digital Government
Federal Bytes
DUELING TELCOS. Changes in the telecommunications market during the past couple of years have pitted the longdistance service providers against the local exchange carriers, with each side aiming to establish a presence in the other's market. That hostility may be spilling over into the federal ma
Digital Government
IBM re-enters storage hunt
IBM Corp. elbowed its way into the enterprise storage market last week, introducing a server product designed to support disk storage for mainframe, Unix and Microsoft Corp. Windows NT platforms. The Enterprise Storage Server, codenamed Shark, puts IBM in headtohead competition with EMC Corp. an
Digital Government