PTO tracks who's using what
A radio network inventory system running on handheld computers has brought the Patent and Trademark Office good grades from the Commerce Department's inspector general. In fiscal 1997, PTO did well in the IG's annual inventory inspection, said George Naughton, president of AMT Associates of Arlington, Va., which assisted in building the system. The inspector general's random tests measure an agency's ability to track valuable items such as computers.
Border Patrol agents, working in desert and other remote areas, test portable PCs
The Immigration and Naturalization Service is testing portable computer systems to help Border Patrol agents do fingerprint identification and voice data entry. The lightweight systems have ruggedized cases for temperature extremes and rough treatment in the desert. About 8,000 Border Patrol agents make more than 1 million apprehensions each year, said Fernanda Young, INS assistant commissioner in the Data Systems Division. Agents patrol 8,000 miles of international boundaries by aircraft, boat and vehicle, on horseback and on
GSA gets quick payback from antitheft app
In a matter of months, a General Services Administration office in Atlanta recouped the $6,000 investment it made in notebook PC theft prevention software. GSA and federal law enforcement officials in Atlanta earlier this year recovered three stolen notebook computers, breaking up a ring of PC thieves in the process. The Federal Protective Service traced the stolen notebooks using CompuTrace software from Absolute Software Corp. of Vancouver, British Columbia.
Feds were hip to PC leasing before Seat Management
PC leasing had already picked up momentum before the General Services Administration awarded its Seat Management Program contracts this month. The Office of the Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs has a new blanket purchasing agreement for leasing in place and plans up to five more during the next month, said Kevin Friel, a contract analyst for OSDHA.
Flowchart app eases mail flow
With an eye to keeping costs in line, Postal Service officials have turned to diagram and flowchart software to streamline the sorting, processing and delivery of mail. "A lot of little improvements add up to a lot," said Cris Dreher, a USPS quality specialist. The independent agency launched the effort more than three years ago, because an organization with 800,000 employees can save millions of dollars a year from small changes, he said.
Voice recognition software is turning into standard fare with office applicationsuites
Lotus Development Corp.'s SmartSuite Millenium edition adds voice recognition and Web publishing to office applications. A headset and microphone come in the box to use with IBM Corp.'s ViaVoice Gold voice recognition application. Competitor Corel Corp. includes NaturallySpeaking from Dragon Systems Inc. of Newton, Mass., in one edition of its WordPerfect Suite 8. Market leader Microsoft Office does not yet have voice recognition software.
DOE earns kudos for building fast supercomputer from spare parts
An international survey has ranked a home-brew Energy Department supercomputer as one of the 500 fastest in the world. Last month, the Los Alamos National Laboratory's Avalon grabbed the 315th spot on the top 500 list at the Supercomputer '98 conference in Mannheim, Germany. Four Los Alamos employees in April built the Avalon over a three-day period, said Michael Warren of the Theoretical Astrophysics Group at the Los Alamos, N.M., lab.
Rugged GridCase notebook withstands dust, shock
The GridCase notebook computer has endured plenty of shocks and vibrations in its long and rugged federal career. The magnesium-cased notebook also is sealed against dust and water. A base 1580XGA unit has a 166-MHz Pentium MMX processor, 32M to 192M of synchronous dynamic RAM, 32K of Level 1 cache and 512K of Level 2 cache. The removable 2.1G hard drive is expandable to 5G.
This year, GSA's FAST is a speedy moneymaker
Kansas City's FAST program for GSA's Heartland Region has been the strongest earner. The General Services Administration's efforts to make the Federal Acquisition Services for Technology program a speedy as well as profitable fee-for-service organization are succeeding, FAST's director said. "We lost our shirts last year, but that's changed this year," said Claude Garmon, the program's director.
Win95 reps rush to aid the Air Force in installation battle
Sonny Brown got the attention of software giant Microsoft Corp. when he complained about the struggle he had installing Windows 95 at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo. The base had to upgrade about 200 PCs and buy as many as 300 more to accommodate the changeover to Win95 from MS-DOS and Windows for Workgroups.
VA credits software, management for success of year 2000 program
A relatively early start, in-house software expertise and senior manager involvement are all helping the Veterans Affairs Department keep its year 2000 program on track, VA officials said. A review of VHA's progress by Booz, Allen & Hamilton Inc. of McLean, Va., in May found there will be no direct or immediate impact on VA patient care or benefits payments come January 2000, Bourget said. The auditors cited VHA's readiness effort as a best-practices case, he
Compaq and Digital will launch a federal subsidiary
Compaq Computer Corp. and its new acquisition, Digital Equipment Corp., will unveil a federal subsidiary by Oct. 1, company officials said. During the next six months, Digital will begin replacing its PCs and servers on federal contracts with Compaq products, following the normal product modification process, said Jim White, vice president and general manager of Digital's federal operations.
Education replaces 386 and 486 PCs as part of year 2000 effort
Education Department officials plan to have their PC LANs ready for 2000 more than a year ahead of time. The department is joining the Air Force and Navy in standardizing on Microsoft Exchange Server. The Microsoft Outlook 97 mail client will take the place of Lotus cc:Mail as the department replaces nearly a third of its 6,000 networked PCs.
Army makes new BPAs for leasing PCs open to all government buyers
A Pentium II system will lease for $104 per month under a one-year lease agreement. Late last month, the Army negotiated three blanket purchasing agreements for leasing computers. All federal agencies can use Army Leasing 1. Government Technology Services Inc. of Chantilly, Va., Telos Corp. of Ashburn, Va., and Vanstar Government Services Inc. of Fairfax, Va., will lease agencies products from General Services Administration Information Technology Schedule contracts.
Medics go online for consults
In July 1996, a general surgeon aboard the USS Enterprise examined a 35-year-old sailor and diagnosed the man as having a malignant melanoma. But instead of calling for a medical evacuation, the medical corpsman reached for his digital camera. He e-mailed the National Naval Medical Center, attaching a digital photo of the infected area. After consulting with Capt. Dennis Vidmar at NNMC, the surgeon removed the growth the next day. The Navy estimated that by performing
Asset Insight supplies latest data on your network
Asset Insight 2.5 collects data about networked clients to give managers a basis for making decisions, Tangram Enterprise Solutions Inc. officials said. Managers can send out agents from Asset Insight—contained in a 2M e-mail attachment or on diskette—that will conduct regular inventories of networked products. With the Desktop Management Interface-compliant application, the Cary, N.C., company supplies an Oracle Corp. relational database management system to store the collected data.
Agencies soon can lease PCs through NIH buys
In advance of a pending General Accounting Office report on its contracting practices, the National Institutes of Health has announced plans to add PC leasing to its three large requirements contracts. The staff of the NIH Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center is working on the contract negotiations. NITAAC runs the agency's large indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contracts.
ZyImage searches help you skip problem-plagued OCR
ZyImage 98 can highlight key words on images of original documents without lengthy and error-prone optical character recognition. ZyImage 98 users can search large volumes of original documents and sidestep OCR, said Jon Karlin, president of ZyLab International Inc. of Gaithersburg, Md. A Pentium PC can process about 8,000 pages per day using ZyImage 98, he said.
Is a single e-mail system enough? EPA will decide
Within weeks, Environmental Protection Agency officials will decide whether to mandate that its regional offices migrate to a standard e-mail system. A June 1997 survey found that more than 70 percent of EPA users run some version of Novell Inc.'s GroupWise. But the remaining 30 percent are running Lotus cc:Mail, Lotus Notes Mail or other messaging products, said Francine Yoder, chief architect in EPA's Information Resources Management Office.
Army makes plans for leasing PCs, buying network gear
The Army Communications and Electronics Command will award blanket purchasing agreements for leasing PCs, a CECOM contracting official said. Systems offered on the Army Leasing BPA will have similar configurations to the products on the Army PC-2 contract, said Lee Harvey, acquisition management officer at the CECOM Acquisition Center–Washington Operations Office.
Do Not Sell My Personal Information
When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.
Manage Consent Preferences
Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active
We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.
Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies
Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link
If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.
Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.
Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.
If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.
Cookie List
A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:
Strictly Necessary Cookies
We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.
Functional Cookies
We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.
Performance Cookies
We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.
Sale of Personal Data
We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.
Social Media Cookies
We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.
Targeting Cookies
We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.
Help us tailor content specifically for you: