Digital Government
GSA unveils revolutionary acquisition concept
The General Services Administration's Federal Technology Service yesterday introduced plans to develop contracts through a new method to fund information technology procurement in which vendors' payment is based on their performance.
Digital Government
Pentagon: "DOD will be ready for Year 2000"
The Pentagon, criticized for lagging in its effort to fix its computers for the Year 2000 bug, plans to announce at a press briefing tomorrow that it will have missioncritical computer systems ready for the new millennium.
Digital Government
EDS gets Census' call
With the next national head count right around the corner, the Census Bureau last month awarded a twoyear, $100 million outsourcing contract to Electronic Data Systems Corp. to develop a telephone call center network to field questions from citizens filling out questionnaires for the 2000 census.
Digital Government
Forms vendor gives away user licenses
JetForm Corp. plans to announce this week that it will provide World Wide Webbased formfiller software free to the federal government. The software is from JetForm's FormFlow 99 package and will enable agencies to comply with a new law that requires they let citizens fill out and sign forms onlin
Digital Government
Federal Bytes
THE VERB 'TO SATELLITE.' A press release last week from the White House said business leaders and government officials will convene on Jan. 12 for the 21st Century Skills for 21st Century Jobs Summit. Speakers at regional summits nationwide will discuss how to raise the skill level of the U.S. work
Digital Government
Phaser 740N gives low-cost color output
In October, Tektronix Inc. shook up the printer market with the announcement of the first $2,000 workgroup color printer, the Phaser 740. We recently had the opportunity to test one of these models and found it to be a good buy for government agencies that want to bring quality color printing to th
Digital Government
Little angst over missed deadline
Federal information technology workers are all too familiar with missed deadlines. So it came as no surprise this month that agencies missed the Jan. 1 deadline for all government checks to be delivered via electronic funds transfer (EFT). But what is extraordinary is the casual attitude about an i
Digital Government
Intercepts
DIGIT INSPECTION. C4I folks don't have a lot of troops, tanks or aircraft to inspect, so Air Force Lt. Gen. John Woodward, the new Joint Staff J6, did not at first evince much surprise when, a few weeks into his job as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Henry Shelton told him to '
Digital Government
Improper completion of forms squanders benefits
Federal employees who have found it difficult to complete forms used by the Office of Personnel Management may be interested in a recent case decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals. The court was asked to decide whether the OPM form that allows federal workers to elect or decline life insurance cover
Digital Government
Unisys Federal builds on Windows NT center
Unisys Corp. has placed a lot of faith in the builditandtheywillcome model. Seeing a need for a facility where federal customers could learn about Microsoft Corp.'s Windows NT in the enterprise, Unisys' Federal Systems Division opened a 'center of excellence' in its suburban Washington, D.C.,
Digital Government
GSA picks 10 vendors in $25B pact
The General Services Administration last month selected 10 vendors to serve as the Federal Technology Service's primary source of information technology services for government customers nationwide, potentially worth $25 billion over 10 years. The winning vendors are Anteon Corp., BoozAllen ?#038; Amp; Hami
Digital Government
GSA overhauls solicitation for ACES
The General Services Administration has released a 'massive rewrite' of its solicitation for a project that will verify individuals' identities for electronic transactions between agencies and the public a critical component for the concept of a digital government. The Access Certificates for Ele
Digital Government
A tangled Web
A haphazard approach to hiring and training Webmasters for agency World Wide Web sites threatens the Clinton administration's plan to use the Internet as a way to deliver core services and information to the public. Federal Webmasters have taken on the crucial role of molding and managing agency We
Digital Government
Y2K threatens Army chemical plant systems
The Army has until the end of January to devise a plan to fix serious Year 2000 problems affecting a chemical weapons disposal system designed to destroy nerve gas and blister agents, according to a recent internal Defense Department report.
Digital Government
Software enables easy Web surveys
Information is power. And while e-mail and the World Wide Web have made it possible to distribute information around the globe faster than ever, a new type of software is turning the Internet into a channel for collecting information. Computer-based survey applications have been available for a lon
Digital Government
IT to miss out on Clinton's DOD budget boost, GEIA says
Little of President Clinton's proposed fiveyear, $110 billion increase in the Defense Department's budget will immediately flow down to specific information technology programs, according to an analysis released last week by the Government Electronics Industries and Information Technology Association (GEIA).
Digital Government
Procurement reform's next big thing
Anybody who reads this column Jan. 11 will have a chance on the morning of Jan. 12 to participate in what I am willing to venture even this early in the year will be one of the most important meetings of 1999. At the General Services Administration Auditorium in Washington, D.C., between 8:30
Digital Government
DOD faces infowar controls
A draft resolution calling for the United Nations to study the impact of information technologies on global security may force the Defense Department to consider international controls on the development and use of strategic information warfare tools. In a statement made in October before the U.N.
Digital Government