Digital Government
Industry Watch
M&A Technology's fed business blooms Dallasbased integrator M&A Technology Inc. is flush with federal government business this year following a recent blockbuy workstation win from NASA's Johnson Space Center and the addition of a General Services Administration contract. M&A which designs and ma
Digital Government
Senate: Nix notebooks on floor
Despite growing pressure to embrace technology in all sectors of government members of the Senate Rules Committee agreed last week that laptop computers should not be allowed on the Senate floor. The agreement came in response to a request by Sen. Michael Enzi (RWyo.) that the committee allow him
Digital Government
Miros upgrades face recognition security solution
Wellesley Mass.based software maker Miros Inc. this month will roll out the newest version of a face recognitionbased application for computer security. When a person sits down at a computer CyberWatch 3.0 like its predecessors will sift through a video image to locate the face of the person
Digital Government
Dell, Digital roll out new models
Dell Computer Corp. and Digital Equipment Corp. this week will introduce notebook computers including models based on the new Intel Corp. Tillamook 233 MHz chip that help fill out and refine their product strategies. Dell is rolling out a lighter thinner version of its Latitude line of computer
Digital Government
Feds, states agree to Year 2000 interfaces
PITTSBURGH Information technology officials last week hunkered down here to decide how to develop Year 2000 interfaces between federal and state computer systems sidestepping tough issues such as the hefty cost for fixing state computer programs and the portion of that bill the federal government
Digital Government
Ruling sends agencies scrambling
A federal court ruling that blocks agencies from deleting important email and word processing files has government agencies hustling for ways to preserve their burgeoning digital archives. U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman ruled late last month that agencies cannot discard the electronic versio
Digital Government
Losing bidders cry foul over NSA switch pact
A National Security Agency networking contract awarded to Cisco Systems Inc. last month has come under sharp attack by the losing bidders with Fore Systems Inc. filing suit with the U.S. Court of Claims and Cabletron Systems Inc. accusing Cisco of engaging in 'predatory pricing" with its winning b
Digital Government
USDA offers a real turkey of a Web site
Looking for some good gobbler gab to accompany Thanksgiving gobbler gobbling? Then dig in to the Agriculture Department's World Wide Web site (www.usda.gov) which serves up a mindboggling array of statistics on turkeys including tips on thawing cooking and storage. The USDA home page which is grap
Digital Government
Pentium IIs noncompliant with EPA regs
The emergence this year of new and more powerful computer chips is making it difficult for agencies to comply with a federal policy that requires them to buy PCs equipped with energysaving features according to agency executives and industry vendors. The Energy Star program created with an executi
Digital Government
GAO says CIOs need focused duties and more authority
A little more than a year after the ClingerCohen Act called for creating chief information officer positions in more than 20 agencies witnesses last week told a House subcommittee that many CIOs are still encumbered with duties that keep them from focusing on management of information resources. I
Digital Government
IRS forms electronic signature policy
As part of the Internal Revenue Service's push to develop an electronic tax filing system the agency next month plans to issue a policy to authenticate socalled electronic signatures on tax returns. Mary Ellen Corridore management and program analyst with the IRS said the agency will identify alte
Digital Government
Mitre to referee FAA, controllers' beefs
Under pressure from Congress the Federal Aviation Administration has done an aboutface and agreed to go back to the drawing board with air traffic controllers to iron out its flawed billiondollar ATC modernization project. The FAA has agreed to meet with Mitre Corp. a federally funded research an
Digital Government
NWS launches next super-CPU buy
The National Weather Service plans to replace its supercomputer with a faster system that would allow for more accurate forecasting of hurricanes tornadoes blizzards and other severe storms. The estimated $35.8 million acquisition would replace the existing 16processor Cray Research Inc. C90 compu
Digital Government
Preserving the nation's history
The question of how to preserve the federal government's growing backlog of electronic documents and thereby its history has been thrown into chaos. Last month a federal judge threw out a regulation that allowed agencies to delete email and word processor documents if paper copies were kept in sto
Digital Government
Roster
Mark Catlett the acting assistant secretary for management and the chief information officer at the Department of Veterans Affairs plans to return to his former job as the department's deputy assistant secretary for budget. A VA spokesman said Ned Powell is awaiting confirmation for Catlett's prese
Digital Government
Feds' strategic plans lack specifics on technology
Strategic plans recently created to comply with the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) fall short in showing how agencies plan to manage information to better assess program results and costs a top General Accounting Office official reported last week to a House committee. In a report su
Digital Government
Virtual LANs ease administrative burdens
Localarea networks have grown larger more complicated and more dispersed since they were introduced in the 1980s. These changes fueled a desire among network administrators at government agencies for simpler administration. Virtual LANs (VLANs) offer such a possibility. VLAN a software feature ava
Digital Government
DOD'S HPCMP director loves the cutting edge
Kay Howell director of the Defense Department's High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP) has shaped her career around her love of cuttingedge technology and an appreciation of what users want from it. Howell took her first job out of college as a computer specialist with the Naval
Digital Government