Digital Government
EIA changes name, broadens focus
The 74yearold Electronic Industries Association last week announced that it has changed its name, opening up its ranks to other associations and laying the groundwork for a broader membership base of information technology and electronics companies. The new organization, called the Electronic Ind
Digital Government
Federal Bytes
Locked up The Justice Department has determined that computer systems that operate federal prison cell doors are Year 2000compliant. So, despite scenarios depicting chaos at the turn of the century, at least federal prisoners will be safely tucked away, said Mary Ellen Condon, DOJ's director of in
Digital Government
GAO: Feds ignoring Clinger-Cohen rules
The General Accounting Office and the Defense Department's inspector general told Congress last week that agencies have been violating the spirit of the ClingerCohen Act by using multipleaward task order contracts to circumvent competition and channel business to favored vendors. 'Based on our on
Digital Government
Dell to bundle OpenNT free with Workstation 400
Responding to users who want to replace Unix workstations with Microsoft Corp. Windows NTbased systems, Dell Computer Corp. plans to announce this week that it will bundle a UnixtoNT software package free of charge to federal customers buying Dell Workstation 400 systems. OpenNT 2.1, from Softwa
Digital Government
MCI networks congressional House offices to district offices
MCI late last month concluded installation of a new data network that will connect the Washington, D.C., offices of Congress members in the House of Representatives to their district offices in about 400 locations throughout the country. Susan Zeleniak, a branch manager at MCI Government Markets, s
Digital Government
Open market & schedules win PC buyers' business
Because they are fast, easy and offer unlimited choices, the General Services Administration schedule and the open market are expected to remain the purchasing channels of choice for government PC buyers during the busy summer season. The past two years have seen a marked shift in government inform
Digital Government
Users await results of Tera road test
On the cutting edge of computing, where hardware designers think of their machines as race cars, a new highperformance engine is undergoing a test drive. The experimental computer architecture created by Tera Computer Co., Seattle, promises to solve the most daunting problem of supercomputing toda
Digital Government
Microsoft, Wang expand partnership
Microsoft Corp. and Wang Global have expanded their alliance for developing solutions based on Microsoft technology, the two companies announced today.
Digital Government
Intercepts
* DISA/GSA lovein? Look for a new spirit of cooperation between the Defense Information Systems Agency and the General Services Administration on joint network development. DISA's director, Lt. Gen. David Kelley, and Federal Technology Service Commissioner Dennis Fischer pledged to harmonize effor
Digital Government
PC workstations
Challenging the traditional demarcation between PCs and workstations, a growing number of vendors are taking advantage of the latest highperformance PC technology to develop a new class of computers called the PC workstation. Since Intel Corp. introduced the 80486 processor in 1989, computer buyer
Digital Government
Roster
Steve Yohai, the former chief information officer at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, last month took a job as CIO at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the agency that charters and regulates national banks. Les Graham, HUD's ADP security staff director, will act as CIO
Digital Government
House, Senate to begin hearings on public/private competition
Two congressional subcommittees are scheduled to meet tomorrow to begin hearings on legislation that would open up government functions, such as data processing, to competition between agencies and businesses. The legislation, the Senate's Fair Competition Act of 1998 and the House's Competition in
Digital Government
Agencies start to wield past-performance club
Federal agencies have started to wield the pastperformance stick that Congress gave them in information technology reform legislation by using vendors' success rates on previous IT contracts to evaluate bids on pending pacts. One of the more strict pastperformance evaluations in government is the
Digital Government
Small Business Administration gets it wrong on GSA schedules
A recent case involving the General Services Administration's multipleaward schedule (MAS) program demonstrates that the Small Business Administration, which is usually the champion of entrepreneurs and others attempting to start or maintain small businesses, can sometimes miss seeing the forest f
Digital Government
PC vendors question future of Energy Star
After almost a year of selling highend systems that exceeded federal regulations for power consumption by PCs, vendors once again can easily meet Energy Star guidelines, thanks to the new Pentium II 333 MHz chip Intel Corp. introduced earlier this year. The question that remains to be answered is
Digital Government
GSA's Barram overrules SBA; releases sked
The General Services Administration plans to issue today the longdelayed solicitation for information technology products and services on the multipleaward schedule. David Barram, GSA's administrator, late last week made decisions on several issues raised by the Small Business Administration, whi
Digital Government
DOD draft shifts ASD/C3I focus/mission
The draft blueprint for the Pentagon's key command and control office calls for a laserlike focus on information superiority and recommends that the Defense Department establish a new assistant secretary of Defense for information superiority to replace the current assistant secretary of Defense f
Digital Government
Fed Reserve gets translation software
The Federal Reserve System recently acquired software from Bottomline Technologies Inc. that will help small banks meet the government's electronic funds transfer mandate. Bottomline's electronic data interchange (EDI) translation software will be used by about 12,000 financial institutions, which
Digital Government