Digital Government
Agencies team on biodata project
Several agencies are combining efforts on a program that could lead to one of the most ambitious datagathering projects ever attempted, with the potential to become a global project. The goal of the U.S. program, which its backers hope eventually might be funded at $40 million a year, is to build
Digital Government
Attention, Shoppers
On Oct. 15, VWR Scientific, a Buffalo Grove, Ill., lab supplies company, received a small but notable purchase order from Massachusetts.
Digital Government
Census RFP calls for phone-in program to support 2000 count
The Census Bureau this month released a final request for proposals for a $100 million outsourcing program that will provide vital telephone callcenter backup for the Year 2000 decennial census. The Telephone Questionnaire Assistance (TQA) program, which is expected to be awarded in January, will
Acquisition
Future Shop
If desktop information technology is becoming a commodity, then there's one golden rule: The more you buy, the less expensive it gets. Individual states are finding that out by combining agency procurements.
People
Tauzin to Introduce E-Rate Funding Bill; E-Rate Rapped at Hill Hearing
Tauzin to Introduce ERate Funding Bill; ERate Rapped at Hill Hearing
Digital Government
Business Objects tailors tools for extranets
Business Objects SA last week announced a new version of its World Wide Webbased decisionsupport system (DSS) software that includes features intended to make it easier for organizations to extend their tools from an intranet to an extranet. DSS, or 'business intelligence,' tools are designed to
Digital Government
Leasing: Still a tough sell in federal market
A year ago, observers saw leasing as the next wave that would sweep through federal procurement, providing a relatively painless way for cashstrapped agencies to get their hands on the latest technology. By this fiscal year's fourthquarter rush, many people assumed that leasing would be taking up a significant portion of agency information technology dollars.
Digital Government
Commercial PCs take to the field
Once upon a time, when MilSpec ruled, buying a computer was relatively easy. Vendors wrote down exactly what they believed the soldier, sailor, airman or Marine needed, presented those requirements to a contractor, and after some time for testing and refinement, the computer was ready for the fiel
Digital Government
NARA joins document management test bed
The National Archives and Records Administration plans to take part in an advanced computer networking project that could point the way to how it will manage future federal government document handling and storage. The Distributed Object Computation Testbed (DOCT) brings together supercomputers, la
Digital Government
Managing the intranet mess
Intranets are moving into their next stage of evolution from being publishing conduits for pages of static information to more dynamic and interactive resources. People finally will be able to use intranets to run dynamic applications, not just to read material online. Rather than just posting pr
Digital Government
Welcome Relief
The day before the Federal Emergency Management Agency's quickresponse team rolled into town, the swollen Red River crept over a dike and turned Grand Forks, N.D., and its sister city,
Digital Government
Remote Rx
Even if doctors still made house calls, they probably couldn't help the 30 troops who man a remote U.S. Army communications outpost on Hill 1326 in Bosnia. In good weather, the hill is a two to threehour Humvee drive from the nearest paved road. It takes even longer in the winter, when the troops
Digital Government
EBT Solutions
Electronic benefits transfer is 15 years old, and for much of that time it's been a perpetual bridesmaid: full of promise but always a step or two short of its ultimate goal of bringing speed and economy to the welfare delivery system.
Digital Government
Millennium bug reshapes tool market
With federal agencies intensifying their efforts to find and fix Year 2000 software problems the tools market has expanded dramatically in the sheer number of tools available and in the range of capabilities they offer. Just a year or so ago most of the tools were aimed at Cobol the standard progra
Digital Government
Embedded technology develops robust commercial flavor
Embedded systems have until now been the poor cousins of the information technology world toiling in obscurity while their more glamorous PC relatives primp and preen in the spotlight. But a new generation of 32bit chips with 64bit processors just on the horizon are set to drive embedded technolo
Digital Government
Federal EC: FACNET, Internet offer agency options
There are just six months left for federal agencies to comply with the president's mandate to use electronic commerce for many of their procurements. But the question no longer is whether EC will come to the federal government, but how and in what form issues that will be influenced strongly by t
Digital Government