Digital Government
Bill calls for strategic plan, accounting of transactions
Congress this month sent President Clinton a bill that would impose a new requirement on agencies to report progress in using electronic commerce for procurement. Nestled in the 1998 Defense authorization bill which eliminates mandatory use of the Federal Acquisition Computer Network (FACNET) and a
Digital Government
GAO blasts DOD for mismanaging program
The General Accounting Office reported late last month that the Defense Department has not adequately controlled its $18 billion fiveyear plan to eliminate nearly 2 000 duplicative computer systems and has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on the effort. In 1993 DOD offices selected 363 'migr
Digital Government
Latest Domino release primed for intranets
With the latest release of Notes and Domino its companion World Wide Web server platform Lotus Development Corp. has turned this onceproprietary groupware application into a viable platform for standardsbased intranet solutions. Lotus' impressive Notes groupware was in danger of being made unnece
Digital Government
Health care premiums on the rise for feds
Although the Office of Personnel Management says health benefit premiums will go up on average by 8.5 percent in 1998 many federal employees will be faced with even steeper premium increases next year unless they switch health benefit plans. For starters OPM misrepresented the amount of the 1998 in
Digital Government
Letters to the Editor
Lease or buy: Another view In the Oct. 20 issue of Federal Computer Week in 'A Legal View ' Carl Peckinpaugh responded to a question from a company executive regarding how to know when the government should lease or buy an item. Digital would like to offer some additional information for your reade
Digital Government
JetForm builds online fed forms warehouse
Workflow and forms software vendor JetForm Corp. plans to create an electronic forms warehouse on the Internet that would give agencies and the public a single point of access to government forms online. JetForm's announcement coincides with the introduction of legislation last week by Rep. Anna Es
Digital Government
ATF awards leasing pact to Unisys
The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms last month awarded a blanket purchase agreement for seat management services worth up to $30 million to Unisys Corp.'s Federal Systems Division. A Unisys spokesman said the company will provide equipment and services including PCs notebooks printers server
Digital Government
Federal Bytes
A close shave When Joe Koenig director of federal sales for St. Louisbased World Wide Technology Inc. passed through town last month he was sporting a new hair style: a crew cut. During the summer Koenig told his sales staff he would shave his head if they met their numbers for the end of the fisc
Digital Government
GAO lambastes credit union regulator for slow IT fix
In its latest criticism of agencies that have failed to assess and fix computers to properly manage the Year 2000 date change the General Accounting Office last month blasted the National Credit Union Administration for not moving fast enough to fix its computer systems. Last month GAO told the Sen
Digital Government
Fedwire
Davis to pursue coop purchasing Rep. Thomas Davis (RVa.) last week said he will reintroduce early next year cooperative purchasing legislation that would allow state and local governments to purchase products and services from the General Services Administration's multipleaward schedule. Languag
Digital Government
Cohen plan splits C3 & intelligence
Six months after a major review of Defense Department operations Secretary of Defense William Cohen last week announced a sweeping reform of DOD that will dramatically alter how the department manages information technology as well as bolster major Defense IT initiatives. While the Quadrennial Defe
Digital Government
FAA finds Year 2000 tools not up to snuff
The Federal Aviation Administration faced with a time and date software problem that threatened this month to bring down one of its air traffic management systems was forced to manually sift through more than a million lines of code after software tools designed to find code containing times and da
Digital Government
Industry Watch
New Norton package for Windows 95 Symantec Corp. last week announced Norton Utilities 3.0 for Windows 95 the company's latest version of its popular utilities package. The product which will begin shipping this week features new and advanced problemsolving disasterrecovery and optimization capabi
Digital Government
Agencies determine success or failure of past performance
The American Bar Association recently released the results of a survey of government industry and the private bar on how the government is doing using past performance in procurement. Although there were only 133 respondents (24 from government 75 from industry and l8 from the private bar) some pat
Digital Government
DOD Supply launches BPA barrage
The Defense Supply ServiceWashington has quietly awarded a series of blanket purchase agreements covering a range of information technology products and services open to more than 320 DOD agencies. Although DSSW officials have not attached dollar values to any of the four BPAs awarded so far obse
Digital Government
Intercepts
* No Betamax. That's the analogy that Pete Paulson DISA's DISN operation chief uses to describe the agency's cautious approach to the insertion of ATM technology into DOD's backbone network. Concerned about the lack of standards in the networkgizmo industry Paulson said DISA does not want to acqui
Digital Government
New Federal EC Bills Touch State Efforts
The House of Representatives has taken up two new pieces of digital signature legislation with implications at the state level.
Digital Government
Agenda
NOVEMBER 1719 CSI 24th Annual Computer Security Conference and Exhibition. Sheraton Washington. Washington D.C.This conference will feature more than 110 vendors of computer security products and services. Call (415) 9052626 Web www.gocsi.com. 1719 Computer/Communications Procurement in the Fede
Digital Government
Feds, industry at odds over data, duties
Recommendations that the government form partnerships with the private sector to stave off an 'electronic Pearl Harbor' won praise from a Defense Department official but drew criticism from privatesector representatives during Congressional testimony last week. Air Force Gen. Robert Marsh chairman
Digital Government