Author Archive
Bill Murray
Digital Government
Weather research group stretches computer power
Without paying any direct costs, the National Center for Atmospheric Research has expanded its computing power tenfold through a loan agreement with a Compaq Computer Corp. reseller. Late last year, NCAR's weather research group in Boulder, Colo., borrowed 42 Digital Equipment Corp. 600-MHz Alpha workstations, seven multiprocessor Digital AlphaServers and two Compaq StorageWorks RAID Array 7000 units, worth $8.7 million. The equipment was loaned by iMSC Corp. of Colorado Springs, Colo.
Digital Government
HP's portable CD-sized scanner can edit, e-mail or fax document afterit's captured
The $699 Hewlett-Packard CapShare 910 mobile 12.5-ounce scanner runs Microsoft Windows CE 2.0 and can capture a page in about six seconds. The CapShare stores up to 50 monochrome, letter-sized page images in Adobe Portable Document Format or Tagged Image File Format. Users view the pages on the unit's LCD monitor and transport them to a PC or printer through a standard serial port or infrared port. Once captured, a document can be edited, e-mailed or
Digital Government
SPAWAR goes through channels to buy 3,000 PCs
In one of the largest federal channel assembly buys to date, the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command has ordered 3,000 Hewlett-Packard Co. PCs, at a price of $6 million, to be assembled at a Frederick, Md., facility by GE Capital IT Solutions Federal Systems . Under SPAWAR's consolidated Program Directorate 15, four program offices in the Global Information and Network Systems Directorate placed the order early this year.
Digital Government
Army puts a premium on retaining its IT staff
NORFOLK, Va.—The Army wants its systems to be all they can be—and that means having good information technology specialists. As network security worries grow, Army officials said they are mulling ways to attract and retain more systems workers. "IT professionals are getting the most attention" of the vast array of military occupation specialties, said Col. Michael Lemons, director of the Army Computer Science School at Fort Gordon, Ga. He spoke last week at the Army Small Computer
Digital Government
PTO prepares RFP for desktop, portable PCs
Patent and Trademark Office officials this week will release a desktop PC request for proposals tailored to small-business contractors with 100 or fewer employees. PTO posted a Commerce Business Daily Online announcement at www.cbdnet.access.gpo.gov on April 27 for the Desktop Acquisition contract, known as DART. Through the buy, PTO will buy desktop and portable computers, printers and other peripherals. The agency has 8,000 PCs.
Digital Government
Keydata builds secure hard drives into its latest 300-MHz portables
The Keynote 7700 notebook PC takes several paths to security. Its KeySecurity IDE hard drive works only in a particular machine, unless altered by the manufacturer. The unit has ROM bootup security, hardware-generated 32-bit encrypted passwords and two Kensington Lock slots from Kensington Technology Group of San Mateo, Calif. The $2,695 notebook features a 300-MHz Pentium II processor, 64M of synchronous dynamic RAM expandable to 192M, a 4.3G removable hard drive upgradeable to 10G and a 13.3-inch
Digital Government
Marines begin NT migration
The 1st Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Pendleton, Calif., last year began moving its messaging platform from Banyan Systems Inc. Vines 8.5 and StreetTalk 8.5 to Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0, Exchange 5.5, and Outlook 97 and 98. The change will give users a chance to develop more collaborative applications after they have learned the new software. Also making the change to NT are database and common storage file applications, said Capt. Bob Hendricks, assistant data
Digital Government
Brother's mobile units take color printing on road
Road warriors who want color printouts can easily pack the 2.2-pound, 2-inch-thick Brother International Corp. MP-21C or MP-21Cdx mobile color printer in a briefcase. Both printers make a direct PC Card connection to a notebook PC for data and power, eliminating the need for separate AC adapters and battery packs.
Digital Government
HCFA will use ODIN to try seat management
The Health Care Financing Administration plans to negotiate a seat management-like task order by late June, using the Outsourcing the Desktop Initiative for NASA program. HCFA officials last month received bid proposals and heard oral presentations from ODIN contractors. "We wanted to get a feel for [seat management]. We were willing to jump in up to our ankles but not up to our necks," said Marianne Bowen, project manager for HCFA's Desktop Replacement Initiative. "This
Digital Government
Census systems get checkup
The Census Bureau met the Office of Management and Budget's March 31 deadline for fixing and testing 60 mission-critical systems for year 2000 readiness, and now it is within days of completing the scanning of all 6,000 desktop PCs. The ones that could not pass the test likely will get a terminate-and-stay-resident software fix, Gregory said, and Census will "probably replace about 100 PCs." The bureau's 12 regional offices and two telephone centers outside the Washington
Digital Government
Air Force signs three BPAs for rugged portables
The Air Force Standard Systems Group last month signed three blanket purchasing agreements for rugged portable PCs. Cytec Corp. of Dallas, Government Technology Services Inc. of Chantilly, Va., and Inacom Government Systems of Fairfax, Va., will supply the rugged portables to Defense Department agencies at 5 percent to 15 percent less than their prices on General Services Administration Information Technology Schedule contracts.
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Digital Government
Acrobat 4.0 viewer reduces task time to maneuver PDF documents
The new Adobe Acrobat 4.0 viewer makes it easier to create Portable Document Format documents, use Web content, secure documents and recycle content within .pdf files, according to Adobe Systems Inc. officials. Users can download entire Web sites, for example, and distribute, edit, print and scale the sites within Acrobat 4.0.
Digital Government
Tool bundles third-party resources under one roof
Help Desk 4.0 from Remedy Corp. incorporates several third-party products and has a new user interface like that of Microsoft Windows 98 and Web browsers. "A lot of federal organizations don't have time to do the help desk work themselves," said Keith Bigelow, director of product marketing and management at Remedy of Mountain View, Calif.
Digital Government
FAA equips maintenance specialists with notebook PCs to replace outdated units
Through two contracts totaling $17.5 million, the Federal Aviation Administration has in the past year purchased about 5,100 notebook PCs from Gateway Inc. and Micron Electronics Inc. The notebooks replace 486 and older PCs, used by maintenance specialists, that were not year 2000-ready. FAA's Airway Facilities program office in October issued an $8.1 million purchase order for 3,744 notebooks from Micron of Nampa, Idaho, FAA spokeswoman Tammy L. Jones said. The 266-MHz Pentium II units run
Digital Government
Defense BPAs offer PCs at steep discount prices
Agencies are reaping discounts as high as 22 percent for PCs and peripherals through new blanket purchasing agreements. The Defense Logistics Agency in recent weeks set up four BPAs open to all federal agencies. The Defense Finance and Accounting Service signed two-year BPAs with four General Services Administration Information Technology Schedule vendors.
Digital Government
HUD uses schedule to standardize on Dell PCs
Housing and Urban Development Department users have been using Dell Computer Corp. PCs exclusively for three years now. HUD began buying Dell OptiPlex systems exclusively in 1996 and 1997. Users now are getting 450-MHz Pentium II systems with 128M of RAM, 10G hard drives and Microsoft Windows 95, said Randall Graham, director of HUD's Customer Service Division in the Office of Information Technology.
Digital Government
Pacific Fleet takes a Y2K test
After year 2000 readiness tests of several hundred mission-critical shipboard systems, officials of the Navy's Pacific Fleet reported significant progress. But the service will keep working until late this year testing and fixing some systems. From Feb. 19 through March 6, the Pacific Fleet tested the USS Constellation's systems during an at-sea exercise off the Southern California coast. Officials reported only four systems of 150 failed in the Battle Group Systems Integration Test.
Digital Government
Air Force runs NATO support network 24-7
Before North Atlantic Treaty Organization pilots began their bombing sorties in Yugoslavia, U.S. Air Force personnel in Europe made some construction sorties of their own at Cervia Air Base, Italy. Technical Sgt. Jeffery Bennett and Staff Sgts. Bert Caouette, Brian Connolly and Jules Volney built an unclassified fiber-optic LAN within 24 hours of arriving at the base, said Maj. Timothy N. Williams, commander of the 48th Expeditionary Communications Flight group at Cervia.
Digital Government
After a crash, Search and Rescue can recover lost or corrupted data
Instead of sending a damaged hard drive to a data recovery service, agencies can recover the lost or corrupted data themselves using $149 software—as long as the stored data has not yet been overwritten and the disk is still spinning. Search and Rescue from PowerQuest Corp. of Orem, Utah, is the enterprise version of Lost and Found from Highpoint Technologies of Austin, Texas, which Power-Quest bought last year.
Digital Government
IRS Web site is a hit—767 million times over
Between Jan. 1 and April 18, taxpayers hit the IRS Web site 767 million times—a 123 percent increase over last year. The IRS defines one hit as one Hypertext Transfer Protocol transfer. The site, at www.irs.gov, drew 25.4 million hits on April 15 alone, said Linda Wallace, chief of Electronic Information Services.
