Digital Government
Federal Bytes
De Vera gets stern warningManny De Vera the National Institutes of Health's program manager for some high profile governmentwide information technology contracts last week had to endure a lot of ribbing and engage in a lot of explaining. The cause of De Vera's troubles was advertisements for NIH's
Digital Government
Popkin, CACI announce software alliance
Popkin Software & Systems Inc. last week announced an alliance with CACI Products Co. to collaborate on business process reengineering tools. Under the agreement CACI Products' SIMPROCESS LITE a process simulation package will be integrated into Popkin Software's SA/BPR process modeling tool. The
Digital Government
Key IT projects at mercy of omnibus funding bill
The fate of a number of key federal information technology projects hangs on lastminute deals made in an omnibus budget bill for eight Cabinet departments and related agencies that Congress hopes to pass by Friday before adjourning for the year. House and Senate leaders said last week that funding
Digital Government
AGENDA
SEPTEMBER 2 9Oct. 2 AFCOM '96 Conference. Fontainbleau Hilton Resort. Miami Beach Fla.For information call (714) 9977966.30Oct. 1 CardTech SecurTech Government '96. Hyatt Regency Crystal City. Arlington Va.Call (301) 8813383 fax (301) 8812430 Web www.ctst.com.30Oct. 1 Federal Object Oriented
Digital Government
Air Force action is on the mark
The Air Force took bold and decisive action last week when it suspended one of its Desktop V vendors until some delivery problems had been corrected. The firm since has been reinstated and endofyear ordering continues apace. The incident left Monday morning quarterbacks discussing whether the ser
Digital Government
Vendors express doubts about new regulation
An initial look at a newly proposed regulation that would expand the use of simplified procedures to some acquisitions of commercial products has some vendors questioning the plan.The proposed rule would carry out a provision of the Federal Acquisition Reform Act (FARA) by letting agencies during a
Digital Government
Veterans Affairs moves forward with VISTA program
The Department of Veterans Affairs is rolling out a new client/server architecture to its 150plus medical centers and is testing the first major application to take advantage of the updated infrastructure. The VA's Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VISTA) supersedes
Digital Government
IT director challenges bureaucratic inertia
For Frank Reilly director of information systems methods and support at the General Accounting Office the federal government's frequent inability to design and develop information technology systems has the same root cause as the problems that afflicted the ancient Babylonians a subject Reilly spen
Digital Government
Compartmented Mode Workstations still in demand for secure applications
Despite having been orphaned by the Defense Intelligence Agency Compartmented Mode Workstations still are being produced enhanced and sold to the Defense Department. And there is even a growing sense of a potential market for spinoffs in the civilian government and commercial sectors. CMW a type of
Digital Government
Air Force lifts suspension; ZDS ready to fix problems
The Air Force quickly reversed course on its suspension of the Zenith Data Systems Desktop V PC contract reopening it just six days after the Standard Systems Group (SSG) temporarily halted the placement of new orders. SSG will allow ZDS to ship Desktop V orders in 30 days instead of the required 1
Digital Government
Census unwraps RFP for DCS 2000 system
The Census Bureau gearing up for the Year 2000 decennial census released late last month a request for proposals for its Data Capture System 2000 the imagebased system that will process the millions of census forms that the public will fill out. As 2000 census forms come in DCS 2000 will digitally
Digital Government
FEDWIRE
Bandwidth Manager orders begin A T&T quietly walked away from a protest on the award of a key Defense Information Systems Network (DISN) procurement to MCI as the Defense Information Systems Agency issued a flurry of delivery orders against the contract. AT&T Government Markets decided not to prote
Digital Government
RAID not always best bet
As discussed in your Sept. 9 Tech Briefing the demand for online storage is growing dramatically in almost every area of government. But there are only three reasons RAID would be the storage solution of choice: habit VAR sales efforts or mistaken demand for instant access. The sales certainly are
Digital Government
Rushing to judgment obscures crucial details
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit recently heard an appeal from Donald C. Newton an Air Force employee who had unsuccessfully appealed his firing to the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB). Newton was an aircraft engine repair supervisor at Tinker Air Force Base Okla. He had been
Digital Government
Hackers attack CIA home page
The CIA Web site breakin early Thursday morning came only hours after the Senate passed a bill designed to crack down on computer crimes by hackers. Hackers apparently affiliated with a Swedish group changed the name of the intelligence agency to the 'Central Stupidity Agency ' altered links to se
Digital Government
Excalibur Tech targets complex retrieval apps
The concept of the Joint Intelligence Virtual Architecture a brainchild of the Defense Intelligence Agency has fired up imaginations at Excalibur Technologies Inc. a company specializing in the kinds of search and retrieval capabilities JIVA requires. The details of JIVA itself discussed publicly f
Digital Government
Draft policy would treat Web info as fed records
Agencies will have to treat all information posted to their World Wide Web sites as federal records and establish oversight bodies to manage sites and control content according to an early draft release of Office of Management and Budget guidelines obtained by FCW. The guidelines prepared in July a
Digital Government
Bureaucratus should reconsider comments about downsizing
I would like to comment about some points that Bureaucratus made in his July 22 column about federal downsizing. ~~A net of about 225 000 positions have been eliminated by the Clinton administration's downsizing efforts. It is true that about twothirds of them have been at the Defense Department i
Digital Government
Deskbook should be living document
The Defense Department has the start of a good idea with its Defense Acquisition Deskbook.~ ~The deskbook is an online compendium of DOD and federal acquisition regulations coupled with a repository of "discretionary" guidance: lessons learned document templates and other wisdom from the front l
Digital Government