Digital Government
Navy kicks off radical intranet buy
The Navy plans to use a radical strategy to build its much anticipated megaintranet, which will provide 450,000 users worldwide with items ranging from PCs to communications pipes and could cost as much as $2.2 billion. In an industry briefing set for July 7, the Navy plans to back what it describ
Digital Government
Navy eases shipboard purchasing
The Navy Supply Systems Command has upgraded its standard logistics software and communications program to enable deployed ships to electronically sign government credit card invoices, allowing those ships to avoid paying interest on late payments. This upgrade to the Navy's Standard Automated Logi
Digital Government
Study: Exec pay hurts recruitment
A 'war for talent' being waged among private companies could increase the drain of the federal senior executive work force, and the government likely will fail to meet the challenge of recruiting and keeping highlevel workers, according to a study released last week. The study, conducted by the co
Digital Government
Letters to the Editor
For the record Several recent FCW articles and the latest DOD Buyers' Guide have reported information on GTSI's Portable3 and PC3 contracts that is incorrect. Two articles ['Army Saves on Laptops,' FCW, May 31, and 'IDI gears up Portable3,' FCW, June 7] incorrectly stated that the Army was allo
Digital Government
Fedwire Briefs
NSA, NIST tools urged Federal security experts last week urged a House panel to include in a rewrite of the 12yearold Computer Security Act language that would require agencies to use security solutions provided by the National Security Agency and the National Institute of Standards and Technolog
Digital Government
Viador brings portal tech to fed market
Viador Inc., which designs and installs World Wide Webbased information portals for large organizations, is making a push into the federal market, receiving approval for a General Services Administration schedule contract and opening a Washington, D.C.area office. Viador specializes in structurin
Digital Government
Internet tax panel entangled in challenges
The panel Congress created to help solve the problem of whether and how to tax Internet commerce held its first meeting last week in Williamsburg, Va. Only the naive and the hopeless optimists among us really expect congressional commissions to accomplish anything. In the beginning of last week's m
Digital Government
Ruling delivers job, not post office box
Recently, an administrative law judge had to decide whether a Postal Service employee who was on the verge of being fired should lose his right to rent a post office box. The case involved Michael Sands, a Rochester, N.Y., postal employee since 1985. Sands had rented a post office box at the Downto
Digital Government
Federal Bytes
LONG ARM OF THE (BROTHERIN) LAW. Fresh off his tour as California chief information officer, John Thomas Flynn, now a vice president for Litton/PRC Inc., regaled attendees at last week's Federation of Government Information Processing Councils' Management of Change Conference with a story about h
Digital Government
FCW wins online award
Federal Computer Week received a top national award last week for its online news coverage. The award was part of the 21st annual Publication Excellence Awards of the American Society of Business Press Editors. ASBPE gave its gold award to FCW, an International Data Group Corp. publication, for bes
Digital Government
Web development software: Tools of the trade
It's a modernday equivalent of the chickenandegg riddle: Do most agencies have their own World Wide Web sites because tools have been developed to make it easy to design attractive Web sites? Or were the tools developed to serve the growing popularity of the Web? Whatever the answer may be, the
Digital Government
NCR wins USPS pact
The U.S. Postal Service last week awarded a contract for the second stage of its effort to put pointofservice computer terminals in most post offices.
Digital Government
GTE sells 3 government units
General Dynamics Corp., a manufacturer of 'heavy iron' military platforms such as tanks, submarines and fighter aircraft, placed a $1 billion bet last week on the future of digitized warfare with the purchase of the majority of GTE Government Systems. General Dynamics, which manufactures M1 tanks f
Digital Government
OmniForm 4.0: Looking good but could be better
In the government's ongoing effort to reduce the amount of paperwork that its employees and the general public must complete, one of the most effective weapons in its arsenal may be Caere Corp.'s OmniForm 4.0 electronic forms tool. Built around the optical character recognition (OCR) engine found i
Digital Government
State upgrades personnel system
The State Department is rolling out a new application that will make it easier for the agency to store and retrieve personnel records and information by modernizing and integrating its aging personnel systems into one database. The Global Employment Management System (GEMS) provides realtime monit
Digital Government
Intercepts
QUICKLY ENABLED. The 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit managed to move its satellitebased Joint Task Force Enabler system, which provides NIPRNET, SIPRNET and Joint Worldwide Communications System access for deployed forces, into Kosovo from Macedonia almost as quickly as the grunts themselves. The 2
Digital Government
Feds ponder CKO role
While agencies begin to embrace the concept of knowledge management to improve federal employees' access to information, observers in and out of government disagree on the role of the chief knowledge officer, a position that has been created to lead the charge into this new territory. In the past m
Digital Government
DOD defends software deals
The Defense Department's strategy of negotiating hefty discounts for enterprisewide commercial software licenses has drawn fire from industry, which fears DOD may not be getting the best deals possible. DOD launched its Enterprise Software Initiative (ESI) last month when it awarded a $9.8 million
Digital Government
PC vendors benefit from AF strategy
In its fourth month of operation, the Air Force Standard Systems Group's latest acquisition strategy for buying standard computer products is beginning to pay off in the form of supplier and product flexibility and unprecedented customer response times, officials said. Gateway Inc., Micron Electron
Digital Government